Three

by William C. Oelfke

  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.

  4

  Waxahachie

  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 prep
ared 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.