by Terry James
Kerry Vinchey grabbed instinctively for the controls when the shrill, pulsating sound pierced his ears through the headphones. The electronic guidance-locator screen near the center of the complex middle control console blazed red with warning that the H-9 had been locked onto and was being tracked. Vinchey pushed a button on the left grip of the control and spoke into the headset's microphone.
"Buckle up! Somebody's onto us!"
Moments later, Jacob was at his side, strapping himself into the seat next to Vinchey.
"What do you think you can do up here?" Vinchey said, glancing at Jacob, then at the glowing screen whose warning continued to be punctuated by the high-pitched sound. The pilot pushed a nodule that silenced the noise.
"I'll fly this thing for you if I have to," Jacob joked weakly, his eyes scanning the incredibly intricate agglomeration of buttons, dials and toggles.
"If that happens, them trying to shoot us down will be among the least of our worries," the pilot bantered somberly, searching for the instruments that could jam the enemy's fix on the craft. "Not working! It's inoperative!" he said angrily, trying again to activate the jamming device.
"What's happening?"
"The jamming's totally gone. It's not even hooked up!"
"What does that mean?"
"It means I can't confuse them. They'll lock onto us... hit us whenever they choose. I checked this out a couple of times in the preflight. Somebody has disconnected it since then."
"What can we do?"
"You know that God you've been telling me about? It's time to give Him a call. We're sitting up here like a carnival shooting gallery target." Kerry glanced at Jacob, then back to the instrument panels when he thought he saw his friend's lips moving in silent prayer, as suggested.
"It's almost black down there," Jacob said moments later, straining to look out the right corner of the windshield. "How far are we from the spot you've programmed us to land?"
"We're about five minutes away. But it's taken some kind of wind to stir that much sand and dust." Kerry looked out the left side of the windshield past the nose of the aircraft, then turned to Jacob.
"You'd better go get them prepared, Jake. If they don't get us first with surface-to-air missiles or with fighters, we'll have to take our chances with that turbulence down there. There is a positive side."
"What's that?" Jacob said, hurriedly unbuckling the seat harness.
"Like you said, if the dust cloud is high enough, and we can get into it quickly enough, we'll have good cover. They won't be able to follow us in too closely. Their pursuit aircraft can't maneuver safely under conditions like those down there. The H-9 can... I hope. And, if it's not too rough, our terrain-reading and landing computers will get us to our touchdown spot in good shape."
Vinchey gripped each side of the control tightly and called over his shoulder to Jacob, who stopped to hear the pilot's words before ducking through the cockpit's doorway. "Tell them to expect a sharp turn and steep descent. Let me know when you're strapped down."
Karen clutched Jacob's hand when the plane banked to the right and plunged toward the swirling darkness of the storm below. All bodies strained to battle the negative gravity force being exerted, fighting the sensation that their stomachs were, invading their throats.
"It's all right, Kay... It's all right," Jacob said soothingly to her while he fought his own urge to gasp for the breath that had left him somewhere several thousand feet above. "We'll be coming out of it in a second or two."
"Reminds me of my first and only time on the Coney Island coaster," Conrad Wilson wheezed from his seat, his face increasingly crimson against the silver-white hair, eyebrows and mustache. "On that occasion I had a pretty girl like Karen holding my hand, Jake. Wish I had one now!"
The plane's angle of descent moderated, the scream of the powerful engines and the stress on the airframe vibrating the craft while it struggled to come out of the dive. The bird shuttered and popped, as if, Jacob thought, the wings had snapped or were in the process of snapping from the fuselage. When the H-9 leveled off, it was buffeted wildly from side to side, rocking violently, almost doing a complete roll, it seemed, while Vinchey fought to stabilize it in the vicious winds of the desert storm.
The engines surged and pulsed when Vinchey applied power, then throttled back before throttling up again, trying to maintain controlled momentum and altitude.
"One thing for sure, folks," the pilot said over the intercom, straining between words, "they can't know exactly where we are in this stuff. Looks like we're okay now."
Seconds later, the jet slowed to barely controllable forward movement, the Harrier machinery pushing jet exhaust hard against the desert floor, toward a landing that Vinchey hoped would be within tolerance. When the bird thumped hard but safely against the sand, the flyer let his intensity seethe in exhalation through his clenched teeth. He relaxed his grip on the controls, then cut the engines.
"Terrific job, my friend!"
Jacob's hand slapping against his back brought full realization of the ordeal he had brought them through. His joints ached, his temples pounded with each beat of his heart.
"Yeah... thanks. But I think we should both be giving that compliment to whoever you talked with just before we started down through this stuff..."
The hot sand had blasted the exposed areas of skin nearly raw during the first several hundred meters of their trek against the wind that raged at them from the south. But the storm was dying, and they moved with greater ease.
"We'd better get a reading!" Kerry Vinchey shouted above the howl, pulling the compass from his pocket and squinting while holding the instrument near his face, away from the wind and sand.
Jacob, with Karen clinging to him, pressed against his friend to hear his assessment.
"We're headed a little to the north! The wind's pushing us off course! We'll have to stop to get our heading more often!"
They shuffled through the drifting mounds in the new direction Vinchey pointed out. The wind no longer blew a steady gale, rather came in powerful bursts, occasionally subsiding to a less impeding level. Vinchey, in the lead, stopped again after they had traveled another 300 meters.
"We're almost there!" he shouted to Jacob. "Less than half a kilometer, I'd guess!"
The density of blowing sand thinned while the storm's power quickly spent itself. Their view of what lay ahead became more defined. Jacob could see the tops of the ridged terrain standing in dark maroon relief against the dust-choked, orange sky. Somewhere ahead they would find the canyon's opening, the narrow pathway leading into Petra, the ancient rose-red city carved into the cliffs by a people who could not have fathomed the purpose their backbreaking labors would serve at this most crucial juncture of human history. Jacob mulled the thought while the party again trudged through the dunes. Hugo Marchek's God was indeed the true God. To know such endings from such beginnings.
The wind was alive with new sounds that vibrated the earth beneath them. A familiar pounding that grew painfully louder with each thumping noise it made.
"Choppers!" Kerry Vinchey shouted, pointing to the sky behind them. The huge, black helicopters were above them, sweeping low then encircling them, settling, finally, on the sand mounds that surrounded their captives. Seven INterface controllers spilled from the bird nearest the group and trotted toward them, automatic rifles at the ready.
Karen pressed tightly against Jacob, who put his arms around her and kissed her check. His own fears were devoured by the agony of knowing there was nothing he could say to give solace, to reassure her. INterface had again anticipated him, had outwitted and outmaneuvered him. Nothing left of his carefully conceived and executed plan but the small prayer he almost unconsciously let slip from his spirit, toward Heaven. "Dear Father, save us."
The troops' leader approached Kerry Vinchey, the INterface soldiers moving to positions that would allow them to cover the others. "Do you have weapons?" the darkly-clad man demanded in English spoken with a German a
ccent.
When Kerry said nothing in response, the INterface officer clubbed him with the rifle butt. The soldier held the muzzle of the weapon to the pilot's temple while Kerry supported his weight on hands and knees against the sand.
"Please answer..." the man said in pseudo-polite inflection. "Or I will be obliged to blow your head from your shoulders."
"Leave him alone."
Jacob knelt beside his friend and steadied him by holding Kerry's shoulders in his grip. "We don't have any weapons."
"They have no guns, Colonel," Conrad Wilson said, stepping between the soldier and the fallen man. "Let him get to his feet."
"Sir!" the officer said in a military manner, then stood at parade rest. Jacob looked upward, into his foster father's eyes.
"Sir?" Jacob said incredulously. "Kerry gets hit with a rifle butt for not answering, and you are called 'Sir' when you give this animal an order?"
Wilson ignored Jacob, turning instead to the soldier. "Are the forces ready?"
"Yes, sir! They await your orders, sir." Jacob's emotions blurred with senses darkening inner rage, the abject bitterness of ultimate trust betrayed.
"Why?" he asked softly, his eyes again meeting those of Conrad Wilson.
"There are some things greater than we are, Jacob. We must take second place to them. Our needs, our feelings, are of little matter when considered alongside the eternal." The wind had grown strangely calm, as if the storm, which had not lasted quite long enough to provide the cover needed to get them safely to the canyon city just ahead, had never happened at all.
Now, a deep rumble took the place of the former wind's shrillness, the sound of mechanized war machinery on the move, toward them, toward Petra. "Even if you had made it into those caverns, Jacob, the tanks and artillery would have ended your rebellion against the inevitable kingdom that is coming upon the planet. Your God would not be able to save you and Karen and the rest when the deep-penetration, smart bombs pierce through the cliff tops."
"Why? You must know who you're serving."
"You've read Milton, you know why. Better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven," Wilson said with resigned irony in his voice. "At any rate, I've cast my lot, and we must, as I said, put our parochial interests aside. I am sorry about you and Karen. But I am comforted by the fact that your fate will be less agonizing than will that of the foolish masses cringing in those caves."
The rumbling grew louder, and now dust, which had settled after the abrupt end of the storm, could again be seen billowing skyward in the distance. A storm of even greater fury drew closer by the second, a man-made maelstrom intended to flush its victims in a flood of violence gushing from the satanically enraged INterface fuehrer. Jacob's diffused thoughts were suddenly synchronized into one thought, galvanized by Conrad Wilson's words: "...the foolish masses cringing in those eaves."
Jacob's recall came to him in the unforgettable, unmistakable voice of Hugo Marchek, while his mind's eye reread the passage from Revelation, chapter 12, verses 14-16 in Marchek's Bible,
"And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent. And the serpent cast out of his mouth water like a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood.
And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth."
"Time, and times, and half a time," Jacob thought Three and one-half years....
The woman — the nation Israel — who delivered the Savior — Jesus Christ — the man-child whom the serpent — Satan — hated above all else. The flood — the onstorming INterface assault force! The prophecy of the 12th chapter of Revelation being fulfilled before his astonished eyes!
Jacob felt a rush of renewed strength. "Stay close to me," he whispered to both Kerry and Karen, while he continued, with Karen's assistance, to help the pilot to his feet. "Be ready to move fast when we've get the chance."
The armored vehicles and tanks shook the earth while they drew to within a kilometer. A fighter-bomber shrieked overhead less than 1,000 feet above them, and in the next instant the face of the cliff that guarded the ancient city of Petra erupted, the blast sending huge fragments of rock high into the air, outward, and to the desert floor below. Two jets followed closely behind the first, and the rocks again burst violently when the bombs struck.
"Look!" Karen's wide eyed command caused Conrad Wilson, Jacob, and Kerry Vinchey to turn their attention from the next set of attacking jets, to the top of the cliff, which exploded upward. A thunderous blast drew gigantic boulders and molten rock several hundred meters into the air. The pilots, unable to react in time, flew the planes into the spewing inferno and instantaneous oblivion.
Jacob's legs suddenly trembled, the earth beneath him seemingly turning to liquid. Debris rained around them, while the earth quaked mightily, opening wide fissures that bubbled with lava and expelled acrid smoke that made it difficult to see more than a few meters, in any direction.
He held tightly to Karen while the shaking became more violent. "Don't let go!" he shouted to her, at the same time scanning the area around them for Kerry Vinchey. "Kerry!"
"Here, Jake!... I'm here!" The pilot came through the veil of smoke, reaching to take Karen's offered hand. "Let's head for the cliffs, Jake!" he urged, tugging Karen toward the rocky area beyond the big helicopters, half-swallowed now by huge cracks in the still-shifting earth. "Jacob!"
Conrad Wilson's weak-voiced cry was barely audible through the great noise and commotion taking place around them. Jacob strained to see through the swirling smoke and ash. "Jake! Over here!"
Jacob knelt on one knee in front of the old man, when he saw that Wilson was wedged in a fissure barely wide enough to trap a man's body. "I'll get you out! Take it easy, I'll get you out."
Smoke and gasses arose from the crack that entrapped Wilson, causing both Jacob and the old man to fight for breath while the younger man tried to free his foster father. Kerry Vinchey tried to lift Wilson from behind, without success.
"Never mind, boys... It's over for me," Wilson said. "But not for you!" He pulled a pistol from somewhere within the fissure and thrust it in Jacob's direction, causing Jacob to jerk instinctively, away from his foster father. Before Vinchey could react from behind, Wilson fired two shots in rapid succession.
Jacob was hit from behind, the blow knocking him forward on his knees. The body of the black-uniformed, INterface storm trooper rolled from Jacob, the soldier's face streaming blood from the two holes Wilson had put in his forehead. The dead Controller's hand still clutched the Uzi that had been aimed at Jacob's back.
Conrad Wilson winced, the pistol dropping from his hand. His expression became more relaxed. "Jake, I am sorry... Son. Forgive me."
When Jacob grasped his foster father's hand and arm, the earth convulsed violently, knocking Karen and Kerry Vinchey off their feet and causing Jacob to lose his grip on Wilson.
"Uncle Conrad!" Jacob crawled forward in a desperate attempt to grab the old man, whose eyes bulged widely when the earth fissure closed momentarily, crushing him, before opening wide, causing his lifeless body to slip just beyond Jacob's grasp into the boiling regions below.
"We should be going, Jacob," Karen said after a few moments of emotion-charged silence, gently pulling him away from the chasm. The tears came not from the gasses and smoke that engulfed them, Karen knew while she and Kerry walked Jacob from the abyss, but from love only a son could have for a father lost to him forever.
They moved past the broken places in the earth, past the mangled machinery of war that partially jutted from the cracks in the Jordanian desert's floor. They moved with growing resolve, toward a new beginning, when things would be made right again by the One who had brought them safely this far.
Hugo Marchek's voice again whispered in Jacob's spirit. The words from the
old Book were true. They were absolutely true! "For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be."
"It is even the time of Jacob's trouble, but he shall be saved out of it."
A Look At: The Rapture Dialogues: Dark Dimension—The Second Coming Chronicles
By Terry James
Set in the era from the 1947 Roswell UFO incident, to the terror attacks of 9/11, “The Rapture Dialogues” sets the stage for biblically prophesied events.
USAF Fighter pilot James Morgan finds himself in supernatural conflict that suctions his wife, Laura and daughter, Lori, into clandestine governmental intrigues of terrifying dimension.
Mark Lancing, a young Marine fighter pilot, finds his life intertwined with the plight of the Morgans, through a growing love for Lori, night-marish intrusion by hellish creatures and explosive involvement with Israel’s spiritual and physical wars for survival.
Prophecy expert Terry James offers a stark vision of the future that combines government conspiracy theories, UFO mythology, spiritual warfare and end-times prophecy in a prescient tale eerily reminiscent of the times in which we live.
AVAILABLE NOW ON AMAZON
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Terry James
About Terry James