Light of the Last

by Chuck Black

  Ben and Drew shook hands; then Ben joined Jake, Reed, and Ethan outside.

  Drew watched as Sydney slowly walked toward him. He wasn’t sure how to react or how she might react.

  She sauntered up to him and gave him a froward grin. “I suppose you heard all of that?”

  Drew didn’t say anything. She just nodded in a matter-of-fact way.

  They walked outside in time to see the chopper lifting up and away. Jake didn’t hesitate. He returned to the bunker almost as if Drew and Sydney weren’t even there.

  The thumping of the chopper’s blades slowly faded and was replaced by the chirps and songs of country birds. Suddenly Drew was aware of the beauty of God’s creation, and he was in awe at the genius behind the design of life. Except for the four invisible warriors positioned fifty feet away in each direction, Drew could almost make himself believe he was once more a teenager on a camping trip with Jake in the gentle rolling hills of a Kansas landscape.

  “Looks like you’ve messed my life up one more time, Drew Carter.”

  He lowered his gaze from the blue-and-green canvas of the earth to the beautiful masterpiece God had created and had called Sydney Carlyle. “I’m sorry, Sydney. I never wanted to—”

  “Shut up, Drew,” Sydney said softly. “Just shut up and walk with me.”

  She turned, put her hands in her hip pockets and started walking through a meadow sparsely populated with deciduous and evergreen trees. Drew took a couple of steps to catch up with her. A few steps later, she leaned into him, and he gently put an arm around her. Nothing else was said.

  24

  THE LAST AGENT

  Drew’s senses were peaked. He waited on one of the trails in the designated park in Philadelphia, the same one where Ross had first enlisted him as a NOC agent. Two days earlier he had made contact with Ross and left Sydney in Jake’s care back at the bunker.

  In the meantime, Ben had successfully decoded the files from Senator Hanson to find pages of e-mails and voice messages between other members of Congress and some of the White House cabinet regarding an event called Crossbow. Without the context to which the code name applied, it was difficult to discern intent. However, one of the messages mentioned the IGA, and Drew immediately thought about Hadad’s warning. Was the IGA really trying to kill him? Had he been right all along in his suspicions about Jabbar and the terrorist connections to the IGA?

  There were so many unanswered questions, but the one that needed an answer first was the one regarding Drew’s sanity. He needed resolution before he could go any further.

  Validus and his warriors stood nearby at the ready. Drew turned and faced Validus, eyeing the massive warrior, and their eyes locked.

  “Are you real?” Drew asked.

  Validus hesitated, then scanned the area while giving orders to his men. They spread out from their position to provide cover, leaving Drew and Validus alone. Seconds later, blue arcing flames momentarily encased the massive warrior’s body as he translated into the world of men. As he did, broad, pearl-white wings morphed out from his back.

  Drew just stared, amazed at the ominous and powerful winged warrior. He had never seen such a thing—warriors with wings. If these weren’t visions of imagination, there was only one answer.

  Validus lifted his chin slightly, then broke the silence. “I’m as real as you are.”

  Drew’s eyes evaluated every minute detail of the warrior, looking for some reason not to believe him but hoping he wouldn’t find one. “Then you are…angels?”

  Validus nodded.

  Drew’s faith in God was real, but he needed his mind to be sound too. He shook his head. “How can I be sure? For a long time I believed you were a vision conjured up by my subconscious.”

  “This world is temporary, ours is eternal. Which one do you suppose is more real?” Validus replied.

  Drew had never thought of that.

  “Men do not find God in the fullness of their own confidence. Only the humble in heart find Messiah,” Validus continued.

  “But why me? Why is this happening?”

  Validus stared blankly at Drew, then slowly answered. “There are things that the Lord God Almighty does not reveal until it is time, even to His angels.”

  Drew nodded. “What am I supposed to do then?”

  “It’s simple, Carter,” Validus said, putting a closed fist on Drew’s chest near his heart. “You obey the voice of God.”

  Drew could hear a man approaching behind him as Validus translated back into the spiritual realm. The slight pressure on his chest from Validus’s fist disappeared with the warrior.

  Drew turned and watched as the distant form of Ross approached through the trees. He still didn’t trust Ross. He thought back to every mission he had accomplished for him and tried to determine if he had somehow undermined his oath to protect the United States. Was Ross running some rogue operation controlled by the IGA? Maybe Ross was done with him and this last op was a way to take out two targets at once. Hadad said the CIA had been comprised. Was Ross part of that?

  He watched closely as Ross reached inside his pocket. Drew tensed, then heard the faintest click of a button.

  “Transmissions in the immediate area are being jammed,” Alice said calmly in Drew’s earpiece.

  Ross pointed to the park bench, but Drew waited until Ross initiated the move to sit down.

  Ross looked straight ahead. “You’ve been part of an operation code-named Torrent. For the last five years I’ve been recruiting, training, and assigning NOCs to this operation…without the director’s approval.”

  Drew’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “Because I believe that the Islamic Global Alliance has penetrated our government with agents, but I don’t know how deep they’ve reached. After what’s happened in the last two months, it looks worse than I thought. And now I think they are on to me.” Ross looked at Drew and hesitated. “I had you removed from the CIA and your files redacted because I needed the very best agents on this op. Every one of my other Torrent agents—every one—has been eliminated. You’re the last one, Carter, and from what I heard, they just about got you when they assassinated Senator Hanson. They’re coming after me now too.”

  Drew eyed Ross. He wanted desperately to trust him.

  He gave Ross the USB drive that Senator Hanson had given him. “Senator Hanson told me to give this to you. Perhaps this will tell you how deep the corruption is.”

  Ross took the USB. He looked more than concerned. He looked sad.

  “What is Operation Torrent?” Drew asked.

  “When Aashif Hakeem Jabbar formed the Islamic Global Alliance eight years ago, our intelligence agencies aggressively tried to link the IGA to militant terrorist groups, but no connection could be made. When Jabbar began to gain the trust and respect of governments throughout the world, we started getting pressure to stop investigating him and his organization. You discovered that when you started looking into the IGA on your own. Your investigation raised flags, and they shut you down. But when you wouldn’t let it die, I knew I had to get you to the outside and into Operation Torrent. The problem was that I couldn’t release you without drawing attention, unless there was a legitimate reason for dismissal. You were too good to go missing unnoticed. Agent Reed gave me exactly what I needed when he told me that you confided in him about seeing things.”

  Drew was confused and angry. He had nearly confessed to Reed but never actually told him. And Reed had said he had nothing to do with telling Ross. Someone was lying. How could he trust either one of them now?

  Drew was about to get up and walk away, but something happened that made Drew’s skin crawl with shivers and goosebumps. Validus and one of his warriors were positioned slightly behind Ross and out of his view. Validus whispered something to the warrior standing next to him, and seconds later, the warrior translated into the world of men and took on the perfectly replicated form of Agent Reed.

  Drew’s eyes widened, and he squelched the gasp forming
in his throat. Three seconds later, the form of Agent Reed translated back into the invisible warrior impersonating him.

  Ross’s voice continued, but Drew could hardly concentrate under a flood of wild thoughts. Angels could appear as anyone? Had they instigated his dismissal from the CIA? And to what end? Then Drew remembered Validus’s words. “Only the humble in heart find Messiah.” Validus had done it to break him.

  “I had Dr. Whitton draw out the process to validate the dismissal,” Ross said, “and evidently no one suspected a thing or you would have been killed a long time ago.”

  Validus stared at Drew, and Drew came to a conclusion. The warrior Validus was indeed an angel of God, and for some unknown purpose, Drew was supposed to live. Perhaps it was for this very reason—to help Ross discover the truth about the IGA and America’s involvement with them.

  Ross continued. “After the last two elections, all investigation on the IGA was completely shut down, and I began suspecting a cover-up. But I wasn’t the only one. Senator Hanson from Massachusetts and I served together as officers in the Navy. He’s a man I knew I could trust. He contacted me about his concerns, not only about Congress, but about some of the people who were being appointed to some very strategic and powerful offices.”

  Ross stopped and wiped his hand across his face. It was the only time Drew had seen even the slightest hint of anxiety in him.

  “I’ve never seen Hanson scared before. He told me there were a handful of other congressmen and congresswomen who were just as concerned. Five years ago we secretly launched Operation Torrent. It was my job to recruit and investigate connections between the IGA and worldwide terrorist attacks. But even that wouldn’t be enough. I had to prove that key US political and military figures friendly to the IGA knew that Jabbar was orchestrating the terrorist attacks and supporting him, thereby making them accomplices.”

  Ross looked squarely at Drew. “The deeper I dug, the further Jabbar’s influence went. When my investigation led me to the White House, things got ugly quick. My NOC agents began disappearing. It was only a matter of time before they would discover Torrent, me, and the Patriots—the members of Congress still loyal to the Constitution. Hanson told me he would feed me the evidence to implicate members of the cabinet and some of the directors who have been appointed.” He looked at the USB drive, then tucked it into his pocket. “I guess he gave his life getting this to me.”

  Ross looked away, then back at Drew. “Jabbar is taking over the world, Carter. Only God knows how many other governments he’s secretly overthrown. He’s already in control of high offices in our government. I don’t even trust our intelligence directors. All of his global unification rhetoric has duped even the well-intentioned US citizens and officials. They don’t understand the freedom they’ll give up if they submit to his influence and power.”

  Ross paused to let Drew absorb his words.

  “I’m sorry about Hanson,” Drew said. “He confirmed what you just said, that the infiltration is much worse than originally thought. He said that the Patriots are ready but that they need solid proof from you before they could move.” He hesitated as he remembered Hanson’s last words. “He said they were planning something, but he didn’t finish the message. Whoever else is a member of the Patriots, they’re in danger too.” Drew felt like he should have been able to protect the senator.

  “Hanson was a good man. America needed him,” Ross said. “What concerns me the most is the rhetoric associated with Jabbar. He is being heralded as the Mahdi, the Twelfth Imam, by many Islamic leaders.”

  Drew shook his head. He wasn’t following.

  “The Shiite Muslims believe that the Islamic messiah is the Twelfth Imam, a man who will bring justice and peace to the earth through a global fight against an evil enemy. Martyrdom is their ticket to heaven. Death is not a deterrent. These are extremely dangerous people.”

  Drew had to ask the question that frightened him most. “What about President Harden, sir? Do you think he is part of this?”

  Ross’s face turned gray. He licked his lips, apparently choosing his next words carefully. “I don’t know. So far I don’t have any direct evidence of such. On the other hand, he’s appointed dozens of pro-IGA officials to his staff and cabinet. Unless we act now, I’m afraid Jabbar will soon control the United States. I only hope we haven’t waited too long and that we have enough evidence to convince the people before it’s too late.

  “We know that Jabbar has used terrorism in multiple ways to garner support for the IGA, at times planning an attack and then exposing the jihadists at the last moment, thereby fooling governments into believing they are the true heroes of peace they claim to be. My last agent believed that the IGA was planning something big in the US, something so big it would incapacitate us, but he didn’t discover what it was before he was taken out.”

  Drew shook his head. “Why take over the government only to incapacitate it? It makes no sense.”

  “Jihadist Muslims view Israel as the little Satan and the United States as the great Satan. They envision a world free of both Israel and the US. Once they’ve crippled the US, Israel will be next. Right now the United States is the only thing standing in their way to world domination.”

  Ross handed Drew a folded piece of paper. “Agent Foster died getting this to me. It’s a list of 163 IGA members who have come across the border in the last six months, both legally and illegally—many of them probably through Zapata’s human-traffic route with his arms dealers. The problem is, if they are planning something, we don’t know what it is. We know it’s big, and with Iran’s nuclear program running unchecked by the UN, we suspect it must be a small tactical nuclear bomb, perhaps near the capital. September eleventh isn’t far away.”

  Drew shook his head again. “I still don’t buy it, Ross. Why would our own leaders be a part of their own demise? Even if they don’t believe in the Constitution or our American ideals anymore, they wouldn’t die for Jabbar’s cause.”

  “It’s because they actually believe Jabbar’s message of world peace and unification. All Jabbar needs is to cripple the US government long enough to take out Israel. A nuclear bomb in Washington, DC would do just that. It would take us years to recover.”

  “If that’s true, then just tell the president the truth,” Drew protested.

  “He’d never believe me without proof, Carter. And once I raise the flag, I’m a dead man. The US goes down without a fight. You don’t understand how loved and feared Jabbar is—worldwide!”

  Drew didn’t want to believe Ross. Everything inside him rejected the notion that high-ranking officials in the government would erode the people’s constitutional freedoms for the sake of Jabbar’s Muslim world vision.

  As Drew considered Ross’s words and as his analytical mind kicked into overdrive, the pieces of an ominous plan fell into place. All the intel he had been studying the last few days, along with what he had seen on dozens of missions, connected and synchronized all at once. The existence of such an evil plot choked him. For a moment he became a statue in a world of chaos, watching the foundations of freedom and justice crumble beneath him. He unfolded the list of names of IGA members, and as he read them, Jabbar’s sinister plot was confirmed.

  “Jabbar isn’t trying to cripple the United States, Mr. Ross.” Drew lifted his head and looked straight into Ross’s eyes. “He’s going to destroy it—all of it!”

  Ross looked at Drew, eyes narrowed. “That’s not possible.”

  Drew continued. “If all you have said is true, then Jabbar has atrophied our security and intelligence to the point that the IGA will be able to pull off the perfect terrorist attack and destroy all of America.”

  “What are you talking about, Carter? It would take a hundred nuclear bombs to pull that off. There’s no way they could do it.”

  “This is worse than a nuclear attack, sir, and Jabbar doesn’t need to fire a shot or set off a single explosive.”

  Ross’s eyes widened.

  �
�When I met Hanson, an agent from the Mossad helped me escape, and he gave me this.” Drew handed Ross another USB drive. “He also told me that they had discovered that ‘detonation day’ was September fifth, not September eleventh. That drive contains a list of 112 jihad terrorists that the Mossad has linked to the IGA. All of them have been associated with a training camp in northern Pakistan along the Afghanistan border. It’s the same camp you had me recon two months ago. They’re all suicide bombers, and nearly all the names on his list match the list you just gave me.”

  “Perhaps, but even a hundred suicide bombers couldn’t accomplish what you’re talking about.”

  “They could if the bombs they were carrying were inside them. When I reconned the camp, I discovered that it wasn’t just a training camp for terrorists—it was an incubator site for bioterrorism. I dispatched a micro drone that recorded a conversation between two trainees mentioning Ebola.” Drew looked at Ross. “They’re going to hit major US cities with Ebola.”

  Ross seemed dazed as he considered Drew’s analysis.

  Drew shook his head. “I was slow to understand it because I just couldn’t fathom the magnitude of what they were plotting.”

  “How will they spread the disease? Once an outbreak occurs, the CDC will immediately quarantine,” Ross said.

  “They’ll have to do it quick so that by the time a quarantine is put in place, it will be too late. The fastest way to spread the disease will be at restaurants. If we could find these terrorists”—Drew held up the paper—“we will discover that most of them are employed at fast-food restaurants near transportation hubs—interstate junctions, bus and train stations, airports—to ensure quick and uncontainable spreading. They will probably also target restaurants in political, financial, and business districts. They could easily contaminate the food they prepare with saliva and sweat.” Drew’s analysis was sobering and dreadful, but he was convinced it was true. He considered the consequences. “Within two weeks, millions of Americans will be infected. Within a month, the Ebola epidemic will be unstoppable. The rest of the world will quarantine the North American continent. In less than two months, Jabbar and the IGA will have wiped America from the face of the planet, paving the way for global domination.”