Armageddon: The Cosmic Battle Of The Ages

SIX
YEARS
INTO
THE
TRIBULATION;

TWO
AND
ONE-HALF
YEARS
INTO
THE
GREAT
TRIBULATION

The Believer’s

Rayford Steele
, late forties; former 747 captain for Pan-Continental; lost wife and son in the Rapture; former pilot for Global Community Potentate Nicolae Carpathia; original member of the Tribulation Force; international fugitive in exile, Petra

Cameron (“Buck”) Williams
, mid-thirties; former senior writer for
Global Weekly;
former publisher of
Global Community Weekly
for Carpathia; original member of the Trib Force; editor of cybermagazine
The Truth;
fugitive in exile, San Diego

Chloe Steele Williams
, mid-twenties; former student, Stanford University; lost mother and brother in the Rapture; daughter of Rayford; wife of Buck; mother of three-and-a-half-year-old Kenny Bruce;
CEO
of International Commodity Co-op, an underground network of believers; original Trib Force member; fugitive in exile, San Diego

George Sebastian
, late twenties; former San Diego-based U.S. Air Force combat helicopter pilot; underground with Trib Force and Co-op, San Diego

Ming Toy
, mid-twenties; widow; former guard at the Belgium Facility for Female Rehabilitation (Buffer);
AWOL
from the GC; underground in San Diego

Ree Woo
, mid-twenties; pilot for Co-op; underground in San Diego

Tsion Ben-Judah
, early fifties; former rabbinical scholar and Israeli statesman; revealed belief in Jesus as the Messiah on international TV-wife and two teenagers subsequently murdered; escaped to U.S.; former spiritual leader and teacher of the Trib Force, now teaching the Jewish remnant at Petra; cyberaudience of more than a billion daily

Dr. Chaim Rosenzweig
, early seventies; Nobel Prize-winning Israeli botanist and statesman; former
Global Weekly
Newsmaker of the Year; murderer of Carpathia; leading the Jewish remnant at Petra

Abdullah Smith
, mid-thirties; former Jordanian fighter pilot; former first officer, Phoenix 216; presumed dead in plane crash; on assignment at Petra

Al B. (aka “Albie”),
early fifties; native of Al Basrah, north of Kuwait; pilot; former international black marketer; now member of Trib Force; underground in Al Basrah

Mac McCullum
, early sixties; former pilot for Carpathia; presumed dead in plane crash; underground in Al Basrah

Hannah Palemoon
, early thirties; former GC nurse; presumed dead in plane crash; underground in Long Grove, Illinois

Leah Rose
, early forties; former head nurse, Arthur Young Memorial Hospital, Palatine, Illinois; under-ground in Long Grove, Illinois

Lionel Whalum
, late forties; former businessman; Co-op pilot; underground in Long Grove, Illinois

Chang Wong
, twenty; Ming Toy’s brother; Trib Force’s mole at Global Community Headquarters, New Babylon

Gustaf Zuckermandel Jr. (aka “Zeke” or “Z”),
mid-twenties; document and appearance forger; lost father to guillotine; underground in Avery, Wisconsin

The Enemies

Nicolae Jetty Carpathia
, late thirties; former president of Romania; former secretary-general, United Nations; self-appointed Global Community potentate; assassinated in Jerusalem; resurrected at GC Palace complex, New Babylon

Leon Fortunato
, mid-fifties; former supreme commander and Carpathia’s right hand; now Most High Reverend Father of Carpathianism, proclaiming the potentate as the risen god; GC Palace, New Babylon

Viv Ivins
, late sixties; lifelong friend of Carpathia; GC operative; GC Palace, New Babylon

Suhail Akbar
, mid-forties; Carpathia’s chief of Security and Intelligence; GC Palace, New Babylon

“
FOR
THE
FIRST
time in a long time,” Nicolae Carpathia said, “we play on an even field. The waterways are heal-ing themselves, and we have rebuilding to do in the infra-structure. Let us work at getting all our loyal citizens back onto the same page with us. Director Akbar and I have some special surprises in store for dissidents on various levels. We are back in business, people. It is time to recoup our losses and start delivering a few.”

The new mood lasted three days. Then the lights went out. Literally. Everything went dark. Not just the sun, but the moon also, the stars, street lamps, electric lights, car lights. Anything anywhere that ever emitted light was now dark. No keypads on telephones, no flashlights, nothing iridescent, nothing glow-in-the-dark. Emergency lights, exit signs, fire signs, alarm signs-everything. Pitch-black.

The cliche of not being able to see one’s hand in front of one’s face? Now true. It mattered not what time of day it was; people could see nothing. Not their clocks, watches, not even fire, matches, gas grills, electric grills. It was as if the light had done worse than go out; any vestige of it had been sucked from the universe.

People screamed in terror, finding this the worst nightmare of their lives-and they had many to choose from. They were blind-completely, utterly, totally, wholly unable to see anything but blackness twenty-four hours a day.

They felt their way around the palace; they pushed their way outdoors. They tried every light and every switch they could remember. They called out to each other to see if it was just them, or if everyone had the same problem. Find a candle! Rub two sticks together! Shuffle on the carpet and create static electricity. Do anything. Anything! Something to allow some vestige of a shadow, a hint, a sliver.

All to no avail.

Chang wanted to laugh. He wanted to howl from his gut. He wished he could tell everyone everywhere that once again God had meted out a curse, a judgment upon the earth that affected only those who bore the mark of the beast. Chang could see. It was different. He didn’t see lights either. He simply saw everything in sepia tone, as if someone had turned down the wattage on a chandelier.

He saw whatever he needed to, including his computer and screen and watch and quarters. His food, his sink, his stove-everything. Best of all, he could tiptoe around the palace in his rubber-soled shoes, weaving between his coworkers as they felt their way along.

Within hours, though, something even stranger hap-pened. People were not starving or dying of thirst. They were able to feel their way to food and drink. But they could not work. There was nothing to discuss, nothing to talk about but the cursed darkness. And for some rea-son, they also began to feel pain.

They itched and so they scratched. They ached and so they rubbed. They cried out and scratched and rubbed some more. For many the pain grew so intense that all they could do was bend down and feel the ground to make sure there was no hole or stairwell to fall into and then collapse in a heap, writhing, scratching, seeking relief.

The longer it went, the worse it got, and now people swore and cursed God and chewed their tongues. They crawled about the corridors, looking for weapons, plead-ing with friends or even strangers to kill them. Many killed themselves. The entire complex became an asylum of screams and moans and guttural wails, as these people became convinced that this, finally, was it-the end of the world.

But no such luck. Unless they had the wherewithal, the guts, to do themselves in, they merely suffered. Worse by the hour. Increasingly bad by the day. This went on and on and on. And in the middle of it, Chang came up with the most brilliant idea of his life.

If ever there was a perfect time for him to escape, it was now. He would contact Rayford or Mac, anyone willing and able and available to come and get him. It had to be that the rest of the Tribulation Force-in fact, all of the sealed and marked believers in the world-had the same benefit he did.

Someone would be able to fly a jet and land it right there in New Babylon, and GC personnel would have to run for cover, having no idea who could do such a thing in the utter darkness. As long as no one spoke, they could not be identified. The Force could commandeer planes and weapons, whatever they wanted.

If anyone accosted them or challenged them, what better advantage could the Trib Force have than that they could see? They would have the drop on everyone and everybody. With but a year to go until the Glorious Appearing, Chang thought, the good guys finally had even a better deal than they had when the daylight hours belonged solely to them.

Now, for as long as God tarried, for as long as he saw fit to keep the shades pulled down and the lights off, everything was in the believers’ favor.

“God,” Chang said, “just give me a couple more days of this.”

FOR
THE
FIRST
TIME
since takeoff, Rayford Steele had second thoughts about his and Abdullah Smith’s passenger. “We shouldn’t have brought her, Smitty,” he said. He stole a glance at Abdullah behind the controls.

The Jordanian shook his head. “That’s on you, Cap-tain, I am sorry to say. I tried to tell you how important she was to Petra.”

The darkness enveloping only New Babylon, but visible from more than a hundred miles, was unlike anything Rayford had ever seen. By the time Abdullah initiated the descent of the Gulfstream IX toward Iraq, the clock read 1200 hours, Palace Time.

Normally the magnificent structures of the new world capital gleamed stunningly in the noonday sun. Now a stark and isolated column of blackness rose from New Babylon’s expansive borders into the cloudless heavens as high as the eye could see.

Chang Wong was Rayford’s mole inside the palace. Trusting the young man’s assurances that they would be able to see where others could not, Rayford traded glances with Abdullah as he guided the craft into the dark from the whiteness reflecting off the desert sand. Abdullah flipped on his landing lights.

Rayford squinted. “Do we need an
ILS
approach?”

“Instrument landing system?” Abdullah said. “Don’t think so, Captain. I can see enough to fly.”

Rayford compared the freakish darkness to the beau-tiful day they had left in Petra. He peeked over his shoulder at the young woman, whom he expected to look afraid. She didn’t. “We can still turn back,” he said. “Your father looked reluctant when we boarded.”

“That was probably for your benefit,” Naomi Tiberias said. “He knows I’ll be fine.”

The teenage computer whiz’s humor and self-confidence were legendary. She seemed shy and self-conscious around adults until she got to know them; then she interacted like a peer. Rayford knew she had brought Abdullah up to speed in computer savvy, and she had been in nearly constant touch with Chang since the lights went out in New Babylon.

“Why is it dark only here?” Naomi said. “It’s so strange.”

“I don’t know,” Rayford said. “The prophecy says it affects `the throne of the beast, and his kingdom became full of darkness.’ That’s all we know.”

Rayford’s every visit to Petra had found Naomi grow-ing in influence and responsibility among the Remnant. She had emerged early as a technological prodigy, and as she taught others, Naomi had become the de facto head of the vast computer center. Quickly rising from go-to person to the one in charge, she’d finally become the teacher who taught teachers.

The center that had been designed by Chang’s pre-decessor, the late David Hassid, was now the hub that kept Petra in touch with more than a billion souls every day. Thousands of computers allowed that many men-tors to keep up with Tsion Ben-Judah’s universal cyber-audience. Naomi personally coordinated the contact between Chang in New Babylon and the Tribulation Force around the world.

Having her join the flight to rescue him from New Babylon had been Chang’s idea. Rayford had initially rejected it. He had enough trouble assigning himself the task of traveling more than seventy-five hundred miles from San Diego to Petra, then having Abdullah fly him the last five hundred miles to New Babylon. Combat-trained George Sebastian was better suited, but Rayford thought the big man had been through enough for a while. There was plenty for him to do in San Diego, and anyway, Rayford wanted to save George for what Dr. Ben-Judah called the “battle of that great day of God Almighty,” now less than a year off.

Mac McCullum and Albie, stationed in Al Basrah-little more than two hundred miles south of New Bab-ylon-stood ready. But Rayford had other things in mind for them.

Rayford’s son-in-law and daughter, Buck and Chloe Williams, both wanted in on the extraction of Chang from the enemy lair-no surprise-but Rayford was convinced Buck would soon be more valuable in Israel. As for Chloe, the International Commodity Co-op always suffered when she was away. And somebody had to be there for little Kenny.