Mark of Evil (48 page)

BLUFFDALE, UTAH

Up on ground level, John Galligher was grinding his teeth and grunting loudly as he struggled to keep Chiro’s decoding box two feet above
the entrance to the underground computer vault so the red laser security lights would not be tripped. When Ethan’s head popped up, Galligher yelled out, “Thank You, Lord!”

After Ethan and Chiro were both out of the hole and back on ground level, Galligher used the fishing rod to swing the digital box out of the way and then let go of it with a grunt. All of them simultaneously checked their Allfone watches. No one had a signal.

“The Internet is down,” Chiro shouted. Then he scampered over to his C-Note quantum computer. The On power switch was already engaged, but one additional switch with a little light panel next to it had yet to be flipped. Directly beneath it, Chiro had typed the words on a label:
The Great Commission
. If the light illuminated, that meant that connectivity had been achieved and his computer was connected to the underground core switches. Which meant that somehow the signal had managed to jump twenty-three feet from the end of the fiber-optic cable to the master switch—three feet more than his signal extender was ever designed to achieve.

Chiro whispered a prayer and toggled that switch. A little white light lit up on the panel. When it did, he leaped into the air with a cheer. Then he snatched his Allfone and stared at the screen, waiting for the first evidence that the Internet was back up. A minute later Chiro’s Allfone digital display illuminated. He immediately called Manfred, who was waiting in the computer lab on the second floor of their Yukon hotel. “I’ve got the C-Note connected!” Chiro yelled. “Are you seeing the de-encryption working?”

Ethan and Galligher watched as for several minutes Chiro stood motionless, waiting for the answer. Then Manfred told him something on the other end, and Chiro threw his head back with his eyes closed. “It’s working! My C-Note has deciphered the data center passwords, and now our Remnant program is being uploaded globally.”

Ethan balled up his fists and swung them in the air with a whoop
of laughter. He then hit speed dial on his own Allfone. At the other end, Bart Kingston picked up in New York.

“Bart, this is Ethan. It’s a go. We’re in the system and we’ve over-ridden the Alliance program. We got there first. I want you to start the transmissions from Rabbi ZG in Jerusalem first and follow up with the video testimony from Dr. Radameyer. Do you have the AllLanguageTranslator program synced?”

Kingston had to yell over some noise at his end. “Yes. The rabbi is ready in Jerusalem. We’re set to link his message to our facility here. We’ll sync him with the taped statement of Dr. Radameyer momentarily. Then we’ll shoot it to your routing station in White Horse.”

“Great,” Ethan said. He could hardly hear Bart over the sound of loud banging in the background, so he raised his voice to a shout. “Then Manfred up in the Yukon will transmit to Chiro’s quantum computer here in Utah. And if all goes well, we’ll go global in a matter of minutes.” The banging at the other end continued. “What’s going on out there?” Ethan asked.

“Alliance forces,” Kingston explained. “Three of them. They’re breaking down the AmeriNews entrance as we speak. I’m hoping we can get this transmission out before they make it through the security door.”

“Can you get out of there?”

“We’ll climb out the balcony to a construction chute that’s still up against the building. I think we can slide down the chute to the floor below us. Pray for us.”

Galligher suddenly strode up next to Ethan. “Visitors!” he shouted and pointed down to the data center complex where a squad of blue titanium droid-bots were running in their direction. Galligher turned and took off running back toward the truck.

Ethan called out, “Where are you going?”

“Getting backup!”

Chiro was wide-eyed. “This is when we find out if my computer
friend at IntraTonics really did program that
Disable
code into the droids.”

In two minutes Ethan and Chiro were surrounded by a squad of seven-foot droid-bots with the barrels of automatic weapons sprouting from their chests. The robot leader, who had a dark, bulletproof Plexiglas shield for a face, was bellowing for them to lie down on the ground or be shot. Chiro strode up to within inches of the leader, who was now giving his final warning. He gave a quick glance up to the sky, then began to recite the
Disable
code in a slow, methodical voice. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

There was a pause and a little red flash behind the black face screen of the robot. A few seconds elapsed. Then the droid announced, “You are free to go. Have a good day.” The squad of droid-bots turned and began to march back toward the data center.

Ethan grabbed Chiro by the shoulders. “You did it, Chiro! I told you God would use you mightily today!”

Chiro was beaming. Ethan looked around for Galligher, figuring he was still in the truck. But something else caught his attention. Even with the wavering vision in his left eye he could see trouble off in the distance, kicking up dust and approaching them with the speed of an accelerating sports car. He closed his left eye so he could limit his vision to his right eye and study it closer.

What came into view was a huge black droid, considerably bigger than the rest, churning his legs like an industrial forge and sprinting toward them. The squad of other droids who were retreating back to the data center dutifully stepped out of its way as it blew past them.

“Must be the new generation droid!” Chiro said with mild hysteria. “And it won’t have the old
Disable
code programmed into it.”

Ethan ordered Chiro to run back to the truck.

“What about you?” Chiro yelled as he started sprinting.

“Don’t wait for me.” As Ethan studied the droid, he could now see it held something in his hand.

Chiro was just a few feet from the truck when the droid started firing at them. As the bullets started zinging up to his position, Ethan leaped to his right and barely missed being hit. Facedown in the dirt, he looked back toward the truck. Chiro was down on the ground.

“Chiro, are you hit?”

But Chiro didn’t answer. He was trying to lift his head off the ground and flailing one of his arms in the air in a pitiful movement.

The huge black droid was now about seventy feet from Ethan and lifting an arm over its head. Ethan could see it had in its grip one of the new variable-impact grenades he had read about, the kind designed to explode instantly on impact with rigid, impervious surfaces like the side of a vehicle. But on impact with any elastic surfaces like human flesh or clothing, they were timed to detonate only after three seconds—a safety feature to mitigate possible “droid error” in pitching the explosive at friendly troops.

As the droid reached sixty feet, Ethan realized it was aiming at the side of the truck. The explosion and resulting shrapnel would kill them all.

“Throw it, you monster. No mistakes this time.” As Ethan shouted that, like a flash of lightning he remembered it all—his failed last catch in the last inning in the losing baseball game against the Yankee farm team from Scranton/Wilkes Barre.

The droid let loose in Ethan’s direction at ninety miles per hour, the white impact grenade spinning in a perfect fastball. It headed straight toward the truck. Ethan squinted, closing his left eye and using only his right side vision. At the last millisecond he leaped to his right almost parallel to the ground and with his bare hand extended caught the high-velocity pitch in the fleshy palm of his hand. Howling in pain, he hit the ground while holding the grenade aloft so it wouldn’t strike the hard ground. He quickly rotated the grenade, frantically searching
for the detonator-off thumb switch.
Found it!
It was recessed within the skin of the explosive. He flicked it off with the thumb of his other hand, just shy of three seconds.

The droid was now thirty feet away and closing. It reached down to the button that would have let loose another volley of bullets. But Galligher appeared from the truck and raised his Croatian RT 20mm armor-piercing gun. He let go with a single blast. The bullet hit the mark. It blew the head of the droid completely off of its shoulders. The torso of the giant robot came to a slow stop and then collapsed to the ground. Galligher leapt over to Ethan and reached down with delicate care to lift the grenade out of Ethan’s broken hand. “Sorry, Ethan. I guess I was wrong about you. Wrong about everything.”

As Galligher cradled the grenade, Ethan stumbled over to Chiro, who had been shot several times in the chest and was bleeding out profusely. With tears welling up in his eyes, Ethan bent down over Chiro and searched for words to comfort his faithful friend. But Chiro spoke first. His face was ashen gray and his voice was barely audible.

“Blow up the C-Note computer. Don’t let the bad people get it . . .”

In a choking voice, Ethan said that they would.

Chiro looked up, as if he had seen something in the sky, a vision that only few could ever see this side of the grave. “Oh,” he said with a faint tone of wonder to his voice, like a child. “I see Jesus . . . heaven open . . . on a white horse . . . the Faithful and True . . .” With that, he stopped talking and his head fell against Ethan’s chest.

Ethan choked back tears. He reached down and touched the face of his dead friend and gently closed his eyes, and as he did, he remembered his own vision. Ethan March had been there. In the heavenly realm. For only a short time, but he was there, and he knew that even though Chiro was now gone, he had found his way home to a land of light and peace. No more chaos, fear, or death. A region where everything would finally make sense, because Jesus was in that place.

Next to Ethan, Galligher struggled against a sob.

In the silence of that moment they both heard an unsettling sound. Jumping to their feet, they swiped the tears from their faces to take a look. About two miles away, a pack of armed drone-bots winged their way skyward toward their position.

Without a word Galligher took the impact grenade and set it carefully inside the C-Note quantum computer. He then gathered Chiro in his arms and shouted for Ethan to grab the gun and run after him back to the truck. Galligher tenderly laid Chiro in the back of the truck and then jumped behind the steering wheel with Ethan next to him. He gunned the truck until he was a safe distance away and slammed it to a halt. Then he took the rifle from Ethan and aimed it one more time. Squeezing the trigger, he detonated Chiro’s quantum computer, which exploded in a fiery blast. Then he jammed the truck into gear, spitting stones and dust, and floored it toward the gatehouse.

Ethan turned around to see that the drone-bots in the air above them were gaining fast. As he turned back he noticed several helicopters in the air ahead of them, beyond the perimeter of the razor-wire fence that marked the edge of the Alliance’s geographical control of the data center. They were heading straight for the truck. “We’re pinned!” he shouted.

The drone-bots in the sky behind them started firing, but the truck was just out of range. The guard gate was up ahead and by now Galligher’s foot was to the floor and they were doing eighty. They could see the two Alliance security officers running out of the guardhouse and looking for cover.

Confused, Ethan looked closer at the choppers and recognized them. “U.S. Army Blackhawk helos,” he yelled. “They’re ours!” They were cutting the air and maintaining their position just above the wire fence. Ethan saw the situation instantly: maybe there was a question about who controlled the data center grounds, given the political mess in Washington. But the Pentagon had apparently decided that everything beyond the wire still belonged to the U.S.A.

Galligher gunned the truck and crashed it through the security gate. The instant that happened, the Blackhawk choppers took aim at the squad of drone-bots flying toward them and blasted them out of the air.

As he gripped the steering wheel and straightened the swerving truck, Galligher shouted over to Ethan, “Well, well. It looks like the DOD doesn’t want America in a shotgun wedding with the Alliance after all.”

SIXTY-FOUR

In the shadow of triple-roofed Buddhist temples and the ancient royal palace built to honor pagan goddesses and forgotten kings in Durbar Square, hundreds of local residents of Kathmandu, Nepal, flocked together in the open courtyard. They were stunned at the sight before them. Multiple 3-D images of Rabbi ZG floated in the air, appearing before them, addressing them in their own language. He was explaining the state of the world. “The evil one has planned this technology for evil, but God has permitted it for good, at least for this short period of time.”

“In a few minutes,” he said, “you will hear from one of the world’s great experts in video forensics. He will tell you how the story told by the Global Alliance and the pictures they showed you in an effort to explain away the disappearance of millions and millions of Christians was a lie. In truth, Christians disappeared because they were taken into the presence of Jesus Christ in the Rapture, the gathering of all
Jesus followers who were then on the earth. But do not despair, for I will share with you now the great love of God. You too can have peace with God through His Son, Jesus Christ. For sin has kept all of us at a distance from God. But God sent His only Son, Jesus, to bridge that gap by being the sacrifice for our sins—shedding His own holy and righteous blood on a cross—so that our sins can be forgiven. Yours and mine. Casting your sins away forever, as far as the east is from the west. Farther than the deepest ocean and farther away than the top of the highest mountain.”

Some in the crowd looked up at the towering, snow-capped mountain ranges that rimmed their city and nodded.

“You need only believe in Jesus, and believe in what He did on the cross,” he continued, “and believe that after being killed for your sins and mine, then, just as He predicted, Jesus rose from the grave. This very same Jesus is coming back to earth again. Will you be part of His family? Or will you be counted among the followers of the evil one? Today is the day of decision. Won’t you invite Jesus, the Christ, who is the King of the universe, to come into your heart and to dwell there forever?”