I moved back into position at my workstation and soon had Larry back on screen. “You need to track Thompson down with all possible dispatch and tell him to check his email,” I said.
“Consider it done.”
“Later, Larry.”
“Okay, bud.”
I was just about to click into standby when I remembered an issue that had been lost in the chaos. “Larry, you still there?”
“Yo.”
“Are we private?”
“Nobody close. What’s on your mind?”
“You remember me asking you about an earthquake issue this afternoon?”
“Sure thing. Didn’t know what you were talking about then.”
“But you do now?”
“You bet. That nuke was a simulated quake, the sixth seal. Right?”
“Exactly. Who mentioned the earthquake angle to you?”
He took a sip of Red Bull. “Nobody mentioned it. I read it.”
“Someone sent you a memo?”
“Hell, no, I looked up the seals in Revelation, all by my lonesome.”
“You’re telling me that there was no one in the Bureau officially working the idea of a simulated earthquake today?”
“I’m all over this case, Matt. When I’m not talking to you, I’m making calls, sending emails, doing everything I can to stay up to speed so I can keep you informed as to what we’re doing. The word ‘earthquake’ has not been uttered in an official Bureau sense. Not here. Not Quantico. Not anywhere.”
I thanked him and clicked out. “Tark, you hear that?”
“Yep. Doesn’t sound good, Matthew.”
“It explains a lot, though, like why the Bureau’s making so little progress.”
“You got that right. How do we handle this?”
“We hand him a rope.”
“I like it,” Tark said, pulling out his pipe.
DAY SIX
SUNDAY
... lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth,
even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs,
when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
Revelation 6:12-14
61
3:55 AM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)
YELLOW CREEK
I woke up in the lounge after four hours of sporadic sleep and lay there in the dark trying to clear my head. There were no distinct days anymore, just one big nightmare that refused to end. The details of the current situation started coming back into focus.
After we read the Hart manifesto/gibberish, Tark went to the lounge and crashed on a mattress.
I soon followed, and dreamed I was back in my childhood church. I was grown, but everything around me was as it was back then. My Sunday School teacher, Mrs. Dixon, sat to my right on the very front pew, listening with rapt attention to every word my father rumbled from his pulpit, turning to me with a sweet smile and patting me on the knee every now and then. To my left was Jimmy Lee Tarkleton, eyes wide, soaking up the sermon like it was the grandest thing he’d ever heard. Mrs. Dixon would pat me on the knee, and Tark would reach up and squeeze my shoulder and whisper, “Now that man can preach!”
Time came for the offering, and there to pass the plate was none other than Abdul, except he had a thick shock of jet black hair swept back into a pony tail. Ha! For sure there would’ve been no pony-tailed ushers in my father’s church back in the day.
While Abdul passed the plate, the choir rose to sing. There was Mrs. Edelbrock, the first-grade teacher who used to whack me on the hand with her ruler for talking in class, singing her heart out. And Mr. Denton, and all the other fixtures of the town I grew up in. And right in the middle of the choir, with an angelic voice that lofted beautifully above the others, was Jana Fulton. She even looked like an angel. Her face radiated in a beautiful glow and her eyes looked right at me while she sang Love Lifted Me. Somewhere in the sanctuary, someone snored loudly.
I found myself drifting back into the same dream and shook my head to wake up again. Abdul was snoring on the other sofa so I got up and eased out of the room and down the hall to the control room. There was a coffee pot in the corner and I started a pot brewing, then fired up the link to Larry. He was dozing at his desk. When the coffee pot stopped gurgling, I poured a cup and tapped on the microphone on the front of the video camera. Larry jumped up, rubbed his eyes, and said, “Morning, Matt.”
“Hi, Larry. Got an I.D. on that missile yet?”
“Uh, hang on. Let me see ... ” He rubbed his eyes some more and fumbled through a stack of papers on his desk. “Yeah, the major knew exactly what it was. It’s Russian, but you already knew that. Let’s see, the model is—”
“The model won’t mean jack to me. How big is it?”
The look on his face said it before his mouth did. “Big enough, Matt. It’s one of the new-generation Scud-E jobs, GPS guidance, pinpoint accuracy. “
“How many could it kill?”
“In a populated area, millions. You want me to put you through to Major Thompson? He’s at the White House.”
“No, tell me what else you know about it. How can it be launched?”
He dug through more papers. “It can be fired from a silo.”
“Well, that’s a relief. There’s no way he’s built a friggin’ nuclear missile silo on the sly in this country.”
“It can be fired from a silo. It can also be fired from something called a Topol-M, which is a truck-mounted launcher.”
“Geez, surely he hasn’t been able to smuggle in something like that.”
“I understand they’re in a serious pow-wow over at the big house, Matt. Military, NSA, CIA, the works. I heard the President has been up all night.”
I suddenly felt like an idiot for sleeping. “Any other developments in the past few hours?”
“This has pretty much taken top priority. A few more sketchy pieces of intel on Hart have dribbled in, but nothing useful.”
“Do we have a picture of this guy? I want to see what he looks like.”
“Not a one. Nothing. It’s like he hasn’t been near a camera in his life,” Larry said.
“Okay, thanks for the update. I’ll be in touch. Let me know the second anything breaks,” I said.
“You bet, bud.”
5:06 AM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)
YELLOW CREEK
Tark was awake and we were examining the Hart document. “Blasphemous lunatic,” he said.
“How does the missile square with the seventh seal?”
“Hmmm.” He fetched his pipe and Bible and sat down on the sofa, the world’s first pair of eyeglasses riding the tip of his nose.
“Are you sentimentally attached to those glasses or something?” I said.
“Belonged to my grandpa, why?”
“Just wondering.”
“Remember,” he said, “we’re actually a little bit ahead of him now. Before the countdown was accelerated, the bomb at the plant wasn’t supposed to go off until two-sixteen Eastern time this afternoon. That’s seal number six.”
“How does a nuclear missile mesh with number seven?”
“The seventh seal gets some pretty special treatment, Matthew.” Puffing hard now. “You see, chapter six ends after the sixth seal. It talks of people being in a terrible state of fear after the earthquake, running here and there, trying to hide from the wrath of God. Take a look.”
He handed me the Bible and I read the last few verses:
15 And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;
16 And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:
>
17 For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?
“Now read on into chapter seven a little bit,” he said. I did. “Tell me what you see there.”
“I don’t see anything about the seventh seal. It’s all about ‘sealing’ the foreheads of different tribes of Israel.”
“Exactly. Now look at chapter eight.”
I read the first verse out loud, “’And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.’ What kind of attack could silence be?”
“To understand it, we have to consider the whole picture of what happens between the sixth and seventh seals. Remember, this is all the same story, not a bunch of isolated incidents. The sixth seal, the earthquake, takes place first. We’ve already seen his version of that. Then the people of God are sealed, issued protection from the wrath still to come.”
“According to that brilliant document he sent out, he himself is God. So in that mindset, who are the people of God and how are they protected?”
“Who indeed. He thinks he’s the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and antichrist all rolled up into one big ball. He’s made it pretty clear he considers us all his children, so to get any meaning at all out of this part we have to assume he’s talking about the same chosen people the Bible is. And that would be the tribes of Israel. In the real tribulation, most Biblical scholars believe these people will be set aside and protected.”
I sensed a long-winded derailment coming and steered him back on course. “What about this; he says the Bible has been skewed, right?”
“Yup, that’s what he says. He’s wrong, but that’s his position.”
“And in his schizoid world, he’s also the antichrist, correct?”
“You got it, Matthew. What’s your point?”
“As far as people go, who will be the antichrist’s least favorite group?”
“The chosen people of God. The descendants of the ancient Israelites.”
“Jews, right?”
“It’s a little more complex than just saying ‘Jews’ but generally speaking, yes.”
“Then I think we have to consider Jews to be his next most likely target.”
“I concur.”
“But what could he do targeting Jews that would be devastating to the whole world?”
“Maybe that was a bit of exaggeration by a twisted mind, like his substituting Earth, Texas, for the planet Earth.”
I shook my head. “No, if it were something from him, I’d buy that. This description came from Dane Christian, and he was warning us to stop it. There would be no reason for him to aggrandize the event.”
“Sure would be nice if we could see the rest of his letter.”
“Not just nice. Crucial.”
62
8:17 AM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)
YELLOW CREEK
Tark managed to round up some workers to start cleaning up around the complex in the aftermath of the explosion. Abdul found and fixed the glitch that had us on emergency power, and as soon as Tark and I gave the okay he patched us back into the grids. If I had believed in God I would have issued a word of thanks for allowing me to be born in the post-Freon era. Before this week, I didn’t realize what an air conditioning junkie I was.
I mulled over the Abdul situation some more and almost confronted him but decided to give it a while. It was possible, even likely, that he wasn’t aware of his faux pas. I didn’t want to believe he was a traitor—he had definitely been responsible for real breakthroughs during the week that only helped us—but it was possible it was an elaborate cover and I wanted to keep the upper hand.
Restoring the Christian file was top priority. I had a hunch about how it got corrupted, and I made a call to check the theory.
“Jana, when you went through the main door at Hart’s place, do you recall an unusual tingling sensation, like static electricity?”
“No, why?”
“I thought there might have been a data security field, an anti-espionage device that destroys data passing through it.”
“Sorry, Matt, no tingling.”
“Thanks, I’ll talk to you later.”
“Bye bye,” she said in that sweet drawl.
I hung up the phone, but I could still hear her voice. Lost in it again. What difference did the means of corruption make? None, I admitted, which made me a pretty sorry excuse for a hero, calling a girl while I was supposed to be saving the country, or maybe the world. I suddenly felt like an ass and went back to work.
The file reported a size of just over twelve megabytes, which might be accurate. Or just as easily, not. The attached file was what we needed, not the rest of Christian’s letter. An hour into the hack session, I located the marker that delineated the two components. It was a major step but it was going far too slowly. At this rate I’d still be hammering the keys while Hart did his thing on Monday.
The videoconferencing chime sounded and I pulled up the feed expecting to see Larry. What I got was something altogether different.
“Mr. Decker?”
“Yes, Mr. President.” I quietly asked if someone would grab me a glass of water.
“I want to personally thank you for your heroic efforts on this matter.”
“Thank you, sir, but—”
“Is this conversation private on your end, Mr. Decker?”
I made a few clicks. “Yes sir.”
“Do you mind if I call you Matt?”
“Of course not, sir.”
“Good. Matt, I need not tell you that we’re gravely concerned about this possible missile threat. We’ve spent the whole night assessing possible target areas for such an attack, and quite frankly we’re coming up with goose eggs. Do you have anything else that may help us, anything at all?”
“I have a theory, sir, but I’m not sure how much help it will be.”
“By all means, let’s have it.”
“After conferring with my prophecy consultant, I believe Hart is planning to target Jews.”
“Why in the hell would he do that? Oh, never mind. Who cares why the crazy bastard is doing anything. The question is where and when.”
“We can almost certainly narrow the ‘when’ down to two-sixteen Eastern time tomorrow, most likely PM since he adhered to that pattern in four of the six events thus far. I have no idea where at this point.”
“I see. Matt, you’ve become our go-to man on this operation. I’m counting on you to come through on this. The moment you have any relevant information I want you to contact us. Your feed has been switched here to the situation room instead of the FBI, and I intend for it to remain here for the duration.”
“I’ll do my best, Mr. President.”
“I know you will. That is all.”
“Mr. President, before you go, is Director Brandon with you?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I just want him to know how grateful I am for the assistance he gave on the simulated earthquake issue.”
Stanton’s face registered confusion. “Simulated earthquake?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll let the director fill you in.”
“Very well. Goodbye for now, Mr. Decker.”
“Goodbye, sir.”
The screen went blank and I chugged the glass of water someone had fetched.
If Abdul was on the other side, he was doing a great job of working to maintain his cover. Shortly after I briefed Tark and him on the conversation, he said, “I know you are working on the file from the Mr. Christian, but have you been thinking to look at the original file of the Abraham Hart document that was sent to the press people?”
It took about ten seconds to soak into my brain in its depleted state. “Of course! There could easily be an encrypted layer to that file, just like the White Horse file.”
“That is what I am thinking, Matt Decker.”
The phones were reasonably operational but I couldn’t get a soul on the line at Fox News who had a technical clue. I couldn’t ge
t a human on the line at any of the other major media centers at all. Working a step or two away from the President has its benefits. I raised Larry, who had moved his liaison operation to the White House, and explained our need for the original file. It arrived four minutes later. The Presidential little black book obviously has a different set of phone numbers.
I held my breath as I pulled the file up on my notebook, then deflated like a balloon at the sharp end of a pin. “Good idea, Abdul. But the file is only twenty-seven K. Nothing there but a dot-doc file.” I opened it and read through the babble one more time. It was still just babble.
“Maybe there’s a code in the text itself,” Tark said.
“Worth checking out,” I said. I asked Abdul to run it through a cryptology scan. He started working it and hitting dead ends, which wasn’t surprising. Looking for a needle in a haystack is easy compared to trying to uncover a code in five paragraphs of text without any reference point. Nonetheless, he tried. And tried. And tried some more. I paced and pondered, keeping a watchful eye on his efforts to be sure they were genuine. I saw nothing to indicate otherwise.
Tark paced the room with a copy of the document in his hand, leaving a trail of sweet smoke in his wake.
“I am having no luck,” Abdul said.
“Why don’t you try running the Bible code on it?” Tark said.
“Bible code? You want to start praying for an answer?”
“That wouldn’t hurt, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the Bible code. Surely you’ve heard of it?”
“Surely I haven’t, but I’m all ears now.”
“Back in the nineties, an Israeli mathematician found a bunch of hidden messages in the first five books of the Bible. There were a bunch of books out on it. A bunch of high-brow intellectuals tried for years to debunk it but couldn’t. It’s amazing stuff, Matthew.”
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