“J.E.!” cried Cloe.
J.E. looked back and smiled a great, loving Lejeune smile at his mother.
Cloe returned his smile. She was so proud. She was sorry they would not complete their mission, but they had done everything they could do. She leaned back, grabbing the armrests in a death grip, and awaited whatever might come. She thought of her long-gone mother and her father.
Four thundering silver shadows, with afterburners raging white-hot, blazed by the cabin window to her right.
“No!” she exclaimed. “There are more of them!”
Blam! Blam! came the deadly explosions from behind.
Cloe thought they would explode or fall from the sky, but neither happened. She looked out the window and saw two F-16s forming up on their wingtips. The Star of David was plainly visible under the cockpits of the jets. She had no doubt that two more jets were on the other side.
“Victor, Romero, Mike, niner, niner, seven, this is Israeli flight Halo One with the compliments from Captain Ariel Jacob and the State of Israel. It seems the remaining MiG has decided to go home.”
CHAPTER
80
Once again Michael slammed into the outside of the massive window on the south side of the penthouse on the 160th floor of the tower. His hands were tied behind his back, and he dangled upside down from a rope around his feet. He looked down and saw that it was a long way to the ground, but he was not afraid. If tonight was his time to die, so be it. He had put too many people in their graves to cheat the reaper if it were his turn.
Blood dripped from what was left of the end of his nose; he thought it might be broken from the last hit against the window. Well, his face hadn’t been pretty in a while. The other end of the rope was fastened to a fixture on the observation deck of the tower. Icar stood inside watching as the wind blew him out and then back into the side of the building. How long had he been out there?
Icar had not been sympathetic to his story of being somehow overcome in some strange psychic way by the child. Michael had sworn that the boy had seized mental control of him and he had not come to his senses until the boy had gone to sleep at the chateau. That’s when he had escaped the influence of the child. While not inclined to believe his story, Icar was nevertheless extremely interested in every detail about the boy and made him repeat it over and over. He could not get enough information on what might be the boy’s powers.
“Why didn’t you kill them both then and there?” he had asked.
“I thought only about escaping and getting back here,” Michael had replied.
He knew Icar was weighing whether to trust him or not. His master was not so much watching him as observing him. This was his trial by fire. If he were Icar, he would just cut the rope above and be done with the problem.
Suddenly, he felt himself ascending. In a few minutes, he was sitting on the wall surrounding the observation platform, looking at his boss.
“Your thoughts are clouded from me,” said Icar. “Why?”
Michael knew the beast, in human form, had lost some of its demonic power and perception.
“I don’t know, boss,” said Michael. “Tell me what you want to know, and I’ll tell you.”
Icar smiled at his number one and said, “I need you with me. Your experience with the boy may prove valuable.”
“I don’t know what he did, but somehow he overwhelmed me.” He shook his head as the blood returned to his lower body.
“I thought you had betrayed me,” said Icar. “I told you to throw them off the observation deck. The next thing I know, they are gone, and so are you.”
“It was like I was in a trance or a fog,” Michael replied, trying to sound convincing. “What is he anyway?”
“What is he?” mused Icar. “He’s nothing, just interference from an old adversary. He taunts me by sending a child to thwart me. It’s so like him. But it’s too late. Everything is in motion. Even he cannot stop me.”
“Good,” he responded. “What do you want me to do?”
“The doctor and her friends from the Vatican are on the way to try to stop me,” said Icar. “It seems my efforts so far to dispose of them have not succeeded. My fighters had them until the Jews intervened. Send my special troopers to terminate them. They will have the boy, and by now all the seven will have reunited. Kill them all. I want no last-minute interference.”
Michael considered these instructions. How did Icar know Cloe was coming? Either his powers were growing or he had someone close … inside. The special troopers were a short platoon of the absolute dregs of humanity, or what was left of humanity. They were born killers and highly skilled. Most had been mercenaries in one war or another. They were led by a bearded giant of a man with fiery red hair. Once unleashed, he knew they would follow their prey to the very gates of hell.
“As you wish, so shall it be,” he said, bowing his head.
“Make preparations to move our forces to Israel. It will end there,” said Icar, gazing out to the east.
“It will be done as you say. Where in Israel?”
Icar looked out over the sea far below and did not answer at first. Michael thought he might not have heard.
Just when he considered asking again, Icar said, “We go where all things end, of course.”
CHAPTER
81
Cloe, J.E., the monsignor, Zack, and the curator gathered at the center table of the jet after the deadly excitement. The plane was level and stable in spite of some damage to its underbelly beneath the wings. Sky was flying in formation with the Israeli F-16s.
“How the hell did Icar know we were coming?” stormed Cloe.
“Mom, I don’t know,” said J.E. “But Sky says the MiGs came directly for us. This wasn’t a random patrol.”
“Cloe, Icar could not have known beforehand,” said the curator. “Everyone here is absolutely loyal.”
“True, and everyone who knows what we are doing is right here,” said the monsignor.
“I wonder,” said Cloe, thinking of her phone call to her office in the States. “But that’s for later. Now we have to focus on the remaining elements of the translation. The passage gives us two clues as to location. The first is that it refers to evil being sealed at the mount, and the second says the evil one will be cast into the abyss.”
“If I’m thinking about this correctly,” said the monsignor, “we must locate the mount and then everything else will fall into place—one way or another.”
The jet engines droned in the background as everyone considered the import of the monsignor’s words. One way or another.
“We just go to the mount then,” said Zack. “That’s where the final battle will take place.”
“Young man,” said the curator. “Do you know how many mounts there are in Israel and the surrounding countries that have received some mention in the Bible?”
“Judging from your comment, I’m guessing quite a few,” said Zack sheepishly.
“Just so,” said the old priest. “There’s the Mount of Olives, Mount Zion, Mount Ararat, Mount Sinai, and Mount Calvary just to name a few.”
“We need something to narrow down the search field,” said J.E. “If we have to check out all the mounts, the battle will be over before we even arrive. We need some good intel.”
“There are three real possibilities,” said the monsignor. “It is true there are many mounts in this area that are mentioned in the Bible. Most do not fit the context. As far as the journal tells us, this is a final battle between the forces of good and evil. Father Curator, most of the sites you mention are prominent for some other reason.”
“True, Albert,” replied the old priest. “We need the biblical site of God’s judgment of good versus evil.”
“Right, and scripture tells us a likely place is the Valley of Jehoshaphat,” said the monsignor.
“The Valley of
Jehoshaphat?” questioned Cloe. “I’ve never heard of it. Why would that be our target?”
“The prophet Joel says, ‘Let the heathen be awakened and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat,’ which is referred to as the Valley of Decision,” said the monsignor.
“Yes, God says he will sit to judge all the heathen round about, ‘multitudes and multitudes,’ in the Valley of Decision,” said the curator.
“Where is Jehoshaphat Valley, this Valley of Decision?” asked J.E.
“Some believe it is the Kidron Valley, which lies near Jerusalem between the Mount of Olives and the Temple Mount,” replied the curator.
“Well, that could supply the mount part of the prophecy,” said Zack.
“That’s true, but the Kidron Valley is physically steep and rocky. How would a large-scale battle be fought there?” asked J.E. “Tactically, it doesn’t seem to be the best site.”
“There’s that, but also another problem is that it was the Roman empress Helena, Constantine’s mother, who identified the Kidron Valley as the likely site of the Valley of Jehoshaphat,” said the monsignor. “Scholars have questioned this for years.”
“Isaiah says the judgment of the Lord shall descend upon Edom and the Lord will visit his wrath on all the nations and their armies,” said the curator.
“Perhaps that is the place we seek. It does sound like a place of final judgment. Where is it?” asked Cloe.
“Edom is located in southern Israel, south of the Dead Sea,” replied the monsignor. “It is more open and suited to a great battle. But other than the Isaiah reference, it has little history to recommend it as the site of the final battle for our times.”
“Is there any other place you can think of that might be our site, the one with the mount where evil will be sealed?” asked Cloe. “We’re running out of time.”
Just then Sky came on the intercom to tell everyone they were preparing to land.
She looked around and could see everyone was racking their brains for a solution.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Cloe, but I can’t help with that biblical history shit,” said Louie.
Rey laughed and looked closely at Anna and Zoe, who were talking intensely but had no answers.
The monsignor smiled slightly. Cloe had seen that look before.
“Okay, Albert, out with it,” she said. “You have something.”
“Well, there is one other possibility,” he said. “It’s a very ancient place that is at the foot of a very old trade route between Egypt and Assyria. It was strategically very important in those times, and many great battles were fought there.”
“Ah! Well said, Albert,” said the curator. “Of course, you are speaking of Har-Magedon, or sometimes Har-Megiddo.”
“Quite so, Father Curator,” replied the monsignor.
“What is this Har-whatever?” puzzled J.E.
“It’s a hill, thus the Har, located in northern Israel at the end of the Jezreel Valley,” said the monsignor. “One might consider it a mount. It has been the sight of many famous battles, including one noted in Second Chronicles where Josiah, the king of Judah, was killed in a fight with the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho.”
“Right. As late as 1918, the British defeated the old Ottoman Empire at Megiddo,” added the curator. “Wars have been fought there by the armies of the world for millennia.”
“Interesting,” said Cloe as she heard the wheels lock down for landing. “This sounds promising. But the name Har-Megiddo is not familiar to me. Is it mentioned in the Bible?”
“Yes,” said the monsignor, “but only once.”
Cloe sensed something was coming. Normally, she did not have to draw information out of the monsignor.
“Albert, where is it found?” she asked.
“It’s found in the New Testament but is only seen one time, and that is in the book of Revelation.”
“Okay, this place is referred to in Revelation but how and where?” asked Cloe.
“In Revelation, St. John speaks of the great day of God Almighty when he gathered all the kings of the earth and their armies into a place of final judgment,” said the monsignor.
“Yes?”
The monsignor paused for such long time that Cloe thought he might not answer.
As the wheels hit the runway, he said, “And that place was, in the Jewish tongue, known as Har-Megiddo or, as translated into our language, Armageddon.”
CHAPTER
82
The jet taxied toward a massive hangar at one side of the airport. Two of the F-16s had landed in tandem with them and were now escorting them to the hangar. The other two fighters were flying cover watch above them.
“Looks like they’re expecting trouble,” commented Cloe.
“Unfortunately, they are trained to always expect trouble,” replied the monsignor. “Now, it’s just more so. We can’t know what information Icar has gotten out of Michael. As we speak, he and his forces may be after us.”
“True,” said Cloe. “Icar certainly identified Robby as some sort of threat. But for Michael, he would have had us thrown off the top of his building.”
“We have to assume he will try anything to stop us,” said J.E. “He probably sees us as one of the last obstacles to his dominion of the planet.”
That thought chilled Cloe’s heart, and her stomach fluttered as she considered the possibility that the beast had marked them specifically as the final hurdle to his goals.
“Dr. Cloe, we have the answer to this,” said Robby. “We just have to see it.”
The massive doors to the hangar began to slide back on motorized tracks. The two fighter jets slowed and stopped on either side of the pathway into the hangar. Cloe could see two military helicopters in the dark chasm of the huge building. Technicians surrounded them, apparently making them ready for the next leg of the trip. The rotors were beginning to twirl. Sky pulled up within twenty yards of the helicopters and braked the executive jet. The engines came to a full stop as he threw open the hatch and lowered the steps.
Whoosh! came a sound from the mouth of the hangar.
“RPG!” cried J.E. “Off the plane!”
Everyone piled out of the jet with their weapons as a massive explosion erupted just outside the hangar. Cloe saw one of the Israeli jets hit by the missile detonate and burn. Her face grew hot with the force of the flames. Shrapnel rained down all around them. Immediately, the other pilot firewalled his throttles and roared across the tarmac, searching for flight.
“What’s happening?” cried Cloe.
“We’re under attack!” J.E. yelled. “Run for the helicopters!”
Several rockets were fired at the fleeing F-16 from assailants out of sight. The two overhead jets blasted the entrance to the hangar with cannon fire. Powder, dust, and grit filled Cloe’s mouth and nose as she watched the Israeli jet try to get airborne.
The jet reached the main runway and twirled to the north. The pilot gave it all it had, and the jet roared down the concrete strip. Faster and faster it went until Cloe was sure he would make it. Even as the fleeing plane began to rotate into its take off, it skewed to one side to evade incoming fire.
Blam! the jet exploded as it lifted just off the runway. The RPGs had found their target. Approaching its takeoff speed of 160 knots, the jet’s momentum caused it to continue on briefly into the air even though the missile had destroyed it.
Cloe screamed for the fate of the pilots who had saved them, and she heard her comrades cry out in their anguish. The rotors on the helicopters spun faster, and dust was blowing everywhere.
“To the helicopters!” J.E. repeated.
Sky went first, running for the nearest helicopter, and jumped behind the controls. The young military officer who was warming the helicopter slid into the copilot’s seat.
Small-arms fire came from the mouth of the hangar. The Swiss set up
a covering formation and returned the fire. Several attackers fell under their accurate, disciplined assault. One of the Swiss fell. Two of his fellow soldiers grabbed him and ran for a helicopter.
Cloe picked up Robby and sprinted for the nearest bird. The downdraft from the helicopter’s blades stormed against them, and the dust in the air stung her eyes. Bully galloped along beside them, looking over his shoulder.
“It’s the bad man, Dr. Cloe!” yelled Robby.
Cloe, Robby, Bully, and the remainder of the seven piled onto the helicopter with Sky. The old curator, surprisingly spry for his age, dove for the deck of the helicopter. The monsignor was right behind him but turned, knelt, and continued to squeeze off shots from a large bore handgun. Cloe had no idea where he kept that weapon.
The monsignor exhausted his rounds and leaped aboard the helicopter even as he swapped magazines. Sky lifted the helicopter off the concrete but did not immediately try to fly the gauntlet staging at the mouth of the hangar. Instead, he hovered the bird about ten feet off the ground and moved to the side of the giant hangar where the door would provide some shelter from the fusillade of gunfire now inbound.
Sky then turned the helicopter sideways to the door in the lee of the enclosure as the monsignor grabbed the handles of the fifty-caliber machine gun mounted in the doorway. He cocked the weapon and sprayed the doorway with a deadly, withering fire. Light streamed in through the huge bullet holes in the metal walls. God help anyone who might have thought the walls could provide shelter.
Under shield of the onslaught from the monsignor’s covering fire, J.E. and the Swiss sprinted to the other helicopter and piled in. In a second, J.E. manned the fifty and begin to rake the entrance and near walls with the large-caliber bullets. That will slow them down, Cloe thought.
“Will we be able to get out?” Zack yelled. “The jet couldn’t get away from the missiles. How can we?”
Cloe could hear Sky and the other pilots talking calmly on their radios. Whatever their fate was, they would meet it shortly.
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