The Left Behind Collection: All 12 Books (296 page)

“I will kill you if you do not shut up.”

“Quieting now, Highness. Oh!”

“What!?”

“The water! The ice!”

Chang jumped up and turned on the faucet over his sink.

Blood.

The taillights ahead went bright red, so Mac slammed on his brakes. But suddenly the GC vehicle disappeared from his vision. In the distance, Operation Eagle cars and trucks roared on, but behind them a great cavern opened and the pursuing GC dropped into it.

Mac jumped out and realized his front tires were on the edge of the gigantic crevasse. Amazingly, the lights of the GC cars grew smaller as they continued to fall. The cavity in the earth was hundreds of feet deep, and his idea to sneak behind the GC had almost been fatal. His knees rubbery, he climbed back into the truck and carefully backed away, looking for a way around.

Roaring up past him came yet another GC car, but as it neared the drop-off, its two occupants leaped out and rolled, their weapons clattering onto the pavement. Their car hurtled into the great beyond. The Peacekeepers slowly rose, retrieved their rifles, and took aim at Mac’s truck. “Duck!” he shouted, and his head banged Hannah’s shoulder as they both leaned toward the middle of the front seat. In the back, the Israelis tussled for position.

The bracketing of gunfire made Mac shut his eyes and cover his head, but it stopped almost as soon as it had started, and he rose and stepped out to see the Peacekeepers sprawled dead. No one else was around. He could only surmise that their own bullets had somehow killed them. Mac’s Operation Eagle truck stood unscathed. His phone rang.

It was Rayford. “Tsion’s on the air right now,” he reported.

“Well, that’s good, Cap. Nothin’ I could use more right now than a little broadcast entertainment.”

“Say again?”

“Nothin’.”

“What’s your location?”

“The Grand Canyon.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Good idea not to.”

“Mac, you all right?”

“Yeah. ’Cept for almost drivin’ my people into the netherworld, I’ll make it.”

“Sounds like you’ll have a story, as usual. Can you see what’s happening in the air over Jerusalem?”

“Guess I been lookin’ the other direction, Ray.”

“Well, look up and listen.”

The air battle had moved away from Mac, but in the distance he could see it, and its low rumbling echoes came rolling back. “They hittin’ anybody?”

“Only each other,” Rayford said. “Look out below.”

“I heard
that
!”

Chang was overcome by a feeling so delicious it made him tingle to the top of his head. All over his computer were frantic codes and messages and attempts by the broadcasting division in the next building to yank GCNN off the air. But nothing they did worked. He hoped Tsion would finish soon so he could go to the Chaim audio. That would drive them crazy. With no visual to worry about, they would catch each other coming and going trying to mute the sound.

With one ear monitoring Tsion to know when to make the switch, Chang was also still listening to the cockpit of the Phoenix. Carpathia had turned his verbal guns on Fortunato.

“What good is a religion if you cannot come up with some miracles, Leon?”

“Holiness! I called down fire on your enemy just yesterday!”

“You cooked a harmless woman with a big mouth.”

“But you are the object of our worship, Excellency! I pray to
you
for signs and wonders!”

“Well, I need a miracle,
Reverend.
”

“Excellency,” Akbar interrupted, “you might consider this phone call miraculous.”

“While that infernal Ben-Judah remains on the air, the only miracle is that either of you remains alive. So, thrill me.”

“You recall we lost two prisoners in Greece recently?”

“Young people, yes. A boy and a girl. You have found them?”

“No, but as time and manpower allowed only a cursory investigation, the best we came up with were witnesses who said a Peacekeeper named Jensen may have been involved in both disappearances.”

“Yes, yes, and though he was our man, you lost track of him. So you have found him now?”

“Maybe.”

“I hate answers like that!”

“Forgive me, Excellency. You know how this Micah and his sidekick seemed to appear out of nowhere.”

“Get to the point. Please! You are making me crazy!”

“We got a tip that the two were seen at the King David Hotel, but when everyone fell ill, we didn’t have time to pursue it. Now we have, and we even know what rooms they occupied.”

“And this is a miracle?”

“We have combed both rooms. One contained a wallet that appears to belong to Jensen. The photo, however, does not match the photo in our personnel files.”

“Why would he be foolish enough to leave his identification behind? It is clearly an attempt to mislead.”

“We’re comparing with our international database fingerprints lifted from each room.”

Chang’s fingers flew. He was into the GC Peacekeeper personnel file in seconds and eradicated all vestiges of Jack Jensen.

“Suhail, there must be dozens of different people’s fingerprints in a hotel room, from every recent guest to the staff to—”

“The predominant prints in the one room trace to Chaim Rosenzweig.”

Carpathia laughed. “The man who murdered me.”

“One and the same.”

He laughed again. “Well, which do you think is Rosenzweig? The one in the robe or the one with the scarred face?”

“Excellency, the prints from the scarred man’s room do not lead to Peacekeeper Jensen, interestingly enough. They match the prints of a former employee in your inner circle.”

Back Chang went into the system, and seconds later Cameron “Buck” Williams, former media czar for the Global Community, was gone as if he had never been there.

“I did not study the sidekick,” Carpathia said, “but he did not remind me of anyone.”

“He was your first media guy.”

“Plank? Nonsense. Confirmed dead.”

“My mistake. Your second media guy but first choice.”

“Williams?”

“That’s the man.”

“Micah’s assistant is not Cameron Williams, Suhail. I would know. And let me tell you something else—Micah is
not
Dr. Rosenzweig.”

“All due respect, Excellency, but miracles of disguise can be wrought today.”

“He may be approximately the same height, but that voice? That look? That bearing? No. That could not be playacting.” There was a long pause. “Anyway,” Carpathia said quietly, “I pardoned my attacker publicly.”

“And that protects him from whom?”

“Everyone.”

“Including yourself?”

“Excellent point, Suhail.”

“Anyway, you yourself installed Walter Moon as supreme commander. That apparently didn’t give
him
tenure.”

Chang heard the men laugh, while in the background Viv Ivins supervised the removal of Moon’s body and the cleanup of the area.

Chang switched to Tsion’s broadcast, which closed with Dr. Ben-Judah’s promise to travel to Petra to personally address his million strong “brothers and sisters in Messiah.”

Someone called Suhail. Chang heard him ask Carpathia’s permission to take it, then: “Ben-Judah is coming to Petra, Excellency.”

“Delay its destruction until his arrival.”

“And the blood problem is international.”

“Meaning?”

“Intelligence is telling me the waters of the sea are 100 percent blood.”

“What sea?”

“Every one. It’s crippling us. And we have a mole.”

“Where?”

“At the palace. And connected here somehow.”

“How can you know that?”

“Jensen and Williams? Their files have disappeared from our central database since you and I began discussing them.”

“Quarantine this plane, Suhail.”

“Sir?”

“We will kill the mole, of course, but we must find the leak first. Lie detector tests for everyone. How many is that?”

“Fortunately, not many. Two stewards, myself, and Leon.”

“You were wise to leave me out and diplomatic to leave Viv Ivins out. Do not be diplomatic.”

“You want her polygraphed, Excellency?”

“Absolutely.”

“Perhaps I’ll conduct it myself,” Suhail said.

“And who will conduct yours, Mr. Akbar?”

“Actually, Excellency, lie detecting has become quite streamlined. We now merely use a computer program that detects changes in the FM frequency of the voice. A person has no control over it. He or she can speak at a different pace or even volume, but the FM frequency will change only under stress.”

“Real-ly.”

“It’s gold, sir.”

“Do include me in the testing.”

Chang hacked into the personnel files and created a record showing him in the infirmary and treated symptomatically for boils for the last two days. He saved everything from his computer to the secure minidisk in the bowels of the palace, then purposely crashed the hard drive on his laptop, erasing everything in it. He created a phantom auxiliary hard drive buried under such massive encoding that only another computer working twenty-four hours a day for years could even hope to crack it. He accessed the miniature archive and downloaded everything he needed, then pulled the cords and packed up the machine, putting it deep in a closet. David—the only other person on the planet who could have detected a thing on his hard drive—was actually no longer on the planet.

Chang would be at his desk in his department the next morning, right on time and ready for work. Not only would they not find the mole, but they would also strike out in their search for a contact person in the executive cabinet.

George put down well outside the growing throngs at Petra, opened the door for ventilation, and Buck and the others dozed as load after load of more escapees was delivered. Rayford and Chaim had decided to keep Chaim’s presence a secret for as long as possible so as not to interfere with the massive move into the safe place. Though some had begun walking in and others were airlifted, by daybreak, hundreds of thousands clogged the Siq, awaiting their helicopter hop inside. They sang and rejoiced and prayed.

Buck left the chopper and walked among the people, keeping an eye on the skies and the western horizon as he listened to the radio. Global Community forces had been decimated, nearly half lost in firefights in the sky that never touched Operation Eagle or during ground pursuits that left GC vehicles and bodies buried so deep that rescue operations were abandoned.

The GCNN radio network had switched back to Carpathia’s auspices sometime in the night, after Chaim’s case for Jesus as the Messiah had been broadcast around the world, followed by his prayer of allegiance to Christ. Buck believed Tsion’s prediction that a worldwide revival would break out in the midst of the worst terror of the Tribulation. Reports from around the globe revealed tragedy and death related to the seas having turned to blood.

Ships that counted on processes that made the waters of the ocean drinkable found it impossible to convert the blood. Rotting carcasses of all species of aquatic life rose to the surface, and crews of ships fell deathly ill as many boats radioed their inability to get back to land.

Carpathia announced that his Security and Intelligence forces already had determined the true identities of the impostors who claimed to represent the rebels and that it had been their trickery that resulted in the great seawater catastrophe.