Battle Sky (The Battle Series, Book 4)

by Mark Romang

  Galizar was the sixth of the seven angels chosen to carry out the judgements prophesized in the book of Revelation. Galizar had been guarding his bowl for six-thousand years, waiting patiently for this moment. He took his task seriously. And he knew just what to do.

  The only thing he didn’t like about his assignment was that he would be helping Lucifer somewhat. The 1,740-mile-long Euphrates River acted as a natural boundary. All the ground armies from the east had to traverse it to get to Har Megiddo, and there were only a few bridges safe enough to hold up under the war machines’ heavy weight. The lack of bridges created bottlenecks, which in turn created logistical nightmares.

  These problems would go away shortly after Galizar emptied his bowl into the river. He looked down at the bowl in his hands. The bowl was medium-sized and nondescript. Made of clay, it was unpainted and without decorations. Steam floated up from the bowl’s interior, where a mysterious liquid effervesced.

  Galizar bowed his regal head and began to pray. He spoke in the language of angels. “Oh, mighty Elohim. I stand ready to deliver the sixth bowl judgement. I stand in the precise spot you instructed me to go. And although this judgement will help Lucifer amass his armies of men, I know you are still in control. The bigger the army that gathers in Megiddo the more glory you will receive when you defeat it. It is my honor to fulfill this prophecy. Thank you for selecting me so long ago to pour out this judgement. Amen.”

  Galizar tipped the bowl, allowing its liquid contents to spill out. The steaming, effervescent liquid splashed into the river. Thunder clapped and shook the ground beneath the war machines, and lightning streaked the cloudless sky in response. Galizar held the bowl upside down in his large hands, permitting the last drops to slide out. As soon as the last drop hit the water the Euphrates River began to transform.

  Like a bathtub draining its water, the Euphrates dropped precipitously. After only three minutes’ time, the great river had drained completely. And then a strong wind kicked up and blew across the muddy riverbed, drying it out. Troops spilled out from the personnel carriers that hadn’t yet made it up to the bridge. They gawked and pointed at the river, and then ran up to it. They even walked across the mostly dry riverbed.

  Galizar didn’t move. He still gripped the bowl in its upside down position. Some of the warfighters walked right by him, other troops walked through his spirit form. Galizar watched them until he saw Henrik Skymolt and Vito Abbadelli suddenly appear from nowhere. The antichrist and his false prophet appeared as if they were holograms, and stood in the riverbed, only a dozen yards away from him.

  Galizar could see right through Henrik Skymolt and view the dragon (Lucifer) dwelling inside the long dead Swede. And just like it was recorded in Revelation 16, the beast and the false prophet opened their mouths wide, as did the dragon living inside the antichrist. Galizar witnessed three evil spirits exit the mouths of the unholy trinity. The spirits were tall like Galizar, but unusual looking and somewhat resembled frogs in the face.

  The three spirits glared at him for an extended moment. Scowls broke across their amphibian faces. They knew who he was and where he came from and didn’t approve. Finally, the vile spirits broke eye contact. They turned and headed west toward the frontlines of the gathering army. Galizar watched them go. He didn’t try to stop them. It wasn’t part of his mission to do so.

  There were two parts to the sixth bowl judgement.

  Part one was the Euphrates River drying up. Part two was the three froglike spirits going out to convince the kings and presidents of the world to gather a massive army to wage war against Israel.

  The troops and war machines currently pouring across the dried up river had forged alliances to take out Henrik Skymolt. But the kings and presidents would soon change their minds after the spirits visited them. For the most part they would forget all about their desire to kill Henrik Skymolt.

  The kings and presidents and generals wouldn’t be able to see the froglike spirits, but their ears and minds would plainly hear the spirits whispering instructions.

  War would come to Israel. Jerusalem would come under siege. And then Jesus would return to Earth to defend Jerusalem and set up his earthly kingdom. “Behold, the great day of the Lord Almighty cometh,” Galizar said loudly enough for Lucifer, Henrik Skymolt, and Vito Abbadelli to hear.

  The guardian angel unfurled his massive white wings and took flight. He flew low and fast over the endless caravan of war machines for an extended distance. And then he broke off and headed back to Heaven, his mission completed.

  Chapter 23

  Olympic Peninsula—that same moment

  C.J. snapped open his eyes. Wild-eyed, he turned his head rapidly from side to side and surveyed his forested surroundings for angels and demons warring against each other. But after several tense moments searching, he found himself alone and lying in a tangled heap, the gorge lifeless save for him.

  C.J. rubbed the back of his head and tenderly explored the goose egg pushing through his hair. The vivid dream had seemed so real. In the dream, angels and demons were locked in battle on top of the ridge. But that didn’t make sense. How could he have been dreaming? He didn’t think it was possible to dream while knocked unconscious. REM sleep is necessary for dreams to take place.

  From on his back, he looked up toward the ridge he’d jumped from. He wanted to see if the snakes were descending the cliff. But his position under the trees limited his view. All he could see were fir boughs and little squares of blue sky peeking through the greenery.

  C.J. eased up to rest on his elbows, and then gingerly sat up. He grimaced and grabbed his ribs, most of which he was sure were broken. He’d survived the desperate jump into the gorge, but not without incurring injuries. Still, it felt good to be alive. He’d cheated death by half a whisker.

  The snakes or demons had tried to possess him. First they had tried to possess Tanner, and not able to possess Tanner, they targeted him. C.J. shuddered at his next thought. If the pattern continued the demons would target Brooke next.

  Not seeing any snakes, and feeling like he’d ditched the unholy serpents, C.J. checked his limbs for fractures. Nothing seemed broken, all arms and legs were intact and moved freely, but he noticed his right ankle looked swollen. He closed a hand around the fat ankle and gently squeezed it. His ankle felt tender to the touch, and he guessed he’d sprained it at some point during his madcap plunge through the trees.

  C.J. scanned the ground nearby for his rifle. He’d dropped the weapon while crashing through the treetops. He didn’t see it to his left, but as soon as he turned his head to the right he spotted the rifle lying about fifteen feet away.

  He crawled toward the rifle, but stopped about halfway over and stood up. He limped over to the gun, putting only part of his weight on his right foot. He picked up his rifle and examined it. He worked the bolt several times and decided the action was fine and in normal working order. Making sure the Remington’s safety was on, he checked the end of the barrel. The muzzle was partially plugged with dirt and needles.

  He began to clear the obstruction but suddenly stopped just before finishing. C.J. tilted his head. He thought he heard something, something unnatural, something manmade. The sound had been faint. It came from afar, possibly the sky in the east.

  The echoing sound disappeared, but then it came back, buzzing louder than before. C.J. moved toward higher ground and toward a clearing in the forest. At the clearing he watched the sky toward the east. He still didn’t see anything, but a sick feeling washed over him.

  He recognized the mechanical sound. It was a unique sound, a telltale sound everyone recognized, a sound only a helicopter can make.

  And then he saw them. Not one but two helicopters flying fast as if on a mission.

  The sick feeling in the pit of his stomach increased.

  The helicopters flew in a direction that would take them right over the hidden goldmine.

  “We’ve been discovered,” C.J. mumbled aloud. Without a doubt,
Tanner’s last broadcast had done them in.

  Throwing caution to the wind, C.J. took off in a dead run, ignoring the pain searing his swollen ankle. He had to get back to the bunker and warn his siblings.

  It might already be too late, he thought as he ran like a wild man through the forest.

  Chapter 24

  Olympic Peninsula

  In the bunker’s commons room, Tanner and his sister sat in Adirondack chairs positioned around a 55-gallon drum converted into a wood-stove/fire pit. Candle sconces bolted to walls struggled to light up the room. To pass the time they talked and played games.

  Tanner grinned. “Okay, I got one for you. Would you rather eat cow tongue, or would you rather eat cow brains?”

  Brooke made a sour face. “I’m pretty hungry, but both those menu items sound disgusting.”

  “You have to choose one. It’s how the game works.”

  “I guess I’d rather eat cow brains, because I know where the tongue has been,” Brooke said with a laugh. “Okay, my turn, Tanner. Would you rather eat a piece of chocolate cake with no frosting or sugar in it, or would you rather eat a bowl of melted ice cream with a hair in it?”

  “You know I don’t care much for desserts, Brooke.”

  “Don’t lie to me, little brother. You used to hide cookies and snack cakes in your room back home all the time. So which is it? The cake or the ice cream?”

  “Well, that depends on what kind of hair is in the ice cream.”

  Brooke rolled her eyes at him. “You’re terrible.”

  “Okay, I guess I’ll go with the…” Tanner all at once leaned forward in his chair. “Did you hear something, Sis?”

  “Like what?”

  “It sounded like someone shouting,” Tanner said. He pointed toward a passageway at the far end of the big room. “And the sound came from that passageway.”

  “I’ve never been down that passageway before.”

  “Me either. But C.J. has. He’s explored every one of them. Maybe it was him I heard. Where is C.J. anyway?”

  “He went hunting. He left before first light.”

  “That’s funny. He never told me he intended to go hunting,” Tanner said.

  “I didn’t know either until earlier this morning. I think it was a spur of the moment thing. I woke up as he was leaving. He told me he was going to try to get a deer.”

  Tanner stood up. He reached into a pocket on his cargo jeans. He pulled out a headlamp and turned it on. “I’m going to go a little way down the passageway and see if it is C.J.,” he said.

  Brooke stood up. “I’ll go with you.”

  Tanner put the headlamp on his head. “Are you carrying?”

  Brooke reached behind her back and pulled out a Glock. “I always carry, especially when I go into the timber.”

  Tanner nodded solemnly. “Then let’s go.” They entered the passageway and walked alongside the rails, his headlamp casting an LED light shaft onto the floor and onto the jack-hammered walls. Tanner often wondered what the goldmine was like in its working heyday. He also wondered how much actual gold had been mined from the property. Not enough, or the mine would still be in operation, he speculated.

  Twenty yards into the passageway they came across an ore car sitting forlornly on the tracks, a leftover relic from a simpler time “I feel like we could’ve used this ore car for something,” Tanner mumbled.

  “Yeah, I sort of like it. It’s got a retro vibe to it. If nothing else, we could use it as a rolling trash bin.” They’d been dumping their trash down another passageway, hauling the trash in a makeshift wooden sled, dragging the sled by a rope.

  “Did you hear something just now?”

  “You must have ears like a dog,” Brooke said. “Because I didn’t hear anything.”

  “It’s the twin ESP thing again. Sometimes I can hear what C.J. is thinking.”

  “Really, so what is our brother thinking right now?”

  “I don’t know. But I sense something isn’t right,” Tanner said.

  “I hope you’re mistaken. And I hope C.J. isn’t hurt.”

  “Ditto.”

  Brooke suddenly halted in her tracks. She looked at Tanner. “You’re not imagining things. This time I heard C.J. He’s somewhere up ahead of us. I’m sure of it.”

  “But why aren’t we seeing his headlamp? He’s surely not walking in the dark.”

  “Well, the passageway does make a gradual turn ahead. Maybe C.J. is beyond the bend and we can’t see his headlamp beam.”

  Tanner nodded. “We need to hustle. I think he needs us,” he said and broke into a jog. He didn’t dare run any faster. Darkness and uneven terrain made sprinting too risky. Brooke trotted alongside him.

  They soon came to the bend in the passageway and rounded it. The passageway gradually straightened out and extended for several dozen yards. And near the passageway’s end a light bobbed up and down rapidly. They halted at the sighting.

  “C.J., is that you?” Brooke called out, still holding her Glock.

  “Yes, Sis, it’s me.”

  Tanner and Brooke broke into a jog again. “Are you okay,” Tanner called out.

  “No, I’m not okay. And neither are you guys,” C.J. hollered back.

  Seconds later they met up. “What happened, C.J.? You don’t look so good,” Brooke said.

  “Never mind me. Listen, we don’t have much time. We’ve been discovered. UWC choppers are cruising back and forth over this mountain and hovering near the mine. They’re looking for us.”

  “We always knew this day might come. Thankfully we have an exit plan in place. And we shouldn’t hesitate to implement it,” Tanner said quietly.

  “Maybe they won’t be able to find the entrance to the bunker.”

  C.J. shook his head. “That’s wishful thinking, Brooke. They know we’re here, and will move all the boulders covering up the entrance.”

  “C.J. is right. We have to leave,” Tanner said.

  Brooke hung her head. “But where do we go?”

  “Sometimes the best place to hide is in plain sight. There once was a fugitive mob boss named Whitey Bulger who hid in plain sight for 15 years. He lived in an apartment in Santa Monica like a normal citizen. We could hide in one of the small towns on the Peninsula. There are plenty of abandoned buildings.”

  “But how will that work? UWC officers will go door to door to find us. They know we are on the Peninsula.”

  “She has a point, Tanner,” C.J. said.

  “Then maybe we should try to get off the Peninsula. Hiding in Seattle might be our best bet.”

  “We can’t ride the ferry. We’d have to walk through the RFID scanners,” Brooke pointed out. “And we can’t just swim the Hood Canal or the Puget Sound.”

  “That’s a detail we’ll have to work out along the way. All we have to do now is grab our backpacks and flee,” C.J. said, referring to the backpacks they had pre-packed with survival gear and food, weapons and ammo, and two-way radios. They had placed the backpacks near the door for quick access. They called the backpacks their “go-bags.”

  Tanner nodded soberly. “Let’s get to it then. The time for talking is over.”

  Chapter 25

  Olympic Peninsula

  Brooke grabbed the dangling rope and craned her neck upward. The rope disappeared out a hole in the cavern ceiling. She shook her head. Her ponytail swished from side to side. “I don’t think I can do this, guys. Besides the height, I don’t think I’m strong enough to climb it.”

  “You’re going to have to dig deep and find the strength, Sis,” C.J. said. “You can’t stay here. And this is the only other way out of the mine.”

  After grabbing their “go-bags” they’d fled for some distance down the same passageway where they’d first met up with C.J. They then detoured around a cave-in, fleeing into an adjoining passageway so impossibly narrow that they nearly got themselves stuck, before finally reaching this large chamber.

  Brooke swallowed hard. They stood in a natura
l cavern that butted up to the goldmine, a chamber at least four-stories tall. “How did you find this cave, C.J.?”

  “By accident. I was berry picking last summer, making my way through a thick patch of thimbleberry bushes when I nearly stepped into the entry hole. I just recently dropped this rope down into the cave on my way to warn you guys.”

  “I assume you anchored the other end of the rope to something secure?”

  “Of course. Do you think I’m stupid?”

  “I don’t think you’re stupid. I’m just paranoid, that’s all,” she said, her voice beginning to quaver.

  Tanner patted her on the shoulder. He flashed her a reassuring smile. “You’ll be okay, Brooke. Just imagine you’re back in gym class and climbing the rope.”

  “That won’t work for me. I was never able to climb the rope in gym class. On my best day I only made it halfway up.”

  “You can go last then. Climb up as high as you can. C.J. and I can probably haul you up the rest of the way. Together we’ll get it done,” Tanner promised.

  “That’s a good idea, Tanner. I’ll climb up first. Then you and Brooke can tie the backpacks onto the rope. I’ll haul them up first. It will be much easier to climb without wearing a backpack.”

  Tanner slid off his backpack. “Sounds like a plan to me. Let’s do it.”

  C.J. took off his backpack and placed it to the side. Without hesitating he grabbed the rope and started shimmying up, grunting as he went.

  “He makes it look so easy,” Brook grumbled.

  “Don’t feel bad. C.J. is an extreme athlete. Climbing a rope is an easy task for him.”

  “He’s climbing fast, but his grunts sound like whimpers. He must be hurt.”

  Tanner sighed. “Like usual, C.J. probably isn’t telling us the whole story.”

  In under a minute C.J. had reached the cavern ceiling. She and Tanner watched their brother squirm through a small hole in the ceiling. A few seconds later he hollered down for them to attach a backpack.