by Tim LaHaye
“What’s he saying?”
She looked up at Jacov. “Him? Same thing he’s been saying all night. ‘Jesus is the Messiah. I know. He saved me.’ All that nonsense. What can I tell you? The boss would have thrown him out long ago, but he’s entertaining.”
Jacov was little more than entertaining. His motive might have been pure, but he was having zero impact. Buck moved close and grabbed his ankle. Jacov looked down. “Buck! My friend and brother! This man will tell you! He was there! He saw the water turned to blood and back again! Buck, come up here!”
“Let’s go, Jacov!” Buck said, shaking his head. “I’m not coming up there! No one is listening! Come on! Rosenzweig is waiting!”
Jacov looked amazed. “He is here? Here? Have him come in!”
“He was in. Now let’s go.”
Jacov climbed down and eagerly followed Buck out, accepting cheers and slaps on the back from the merrymakers. They were near the front door when Jacov spotted Stefan heading the other way. “Wait! There’s my friend! I must tell him I’m leaving!”
“He’ll figure it out,” Buck said, steering him out the door.
In the car Rosenzweig glared at Jacov. “I was not drinking, Doctor,” he said. “Not one drop!”
“Oh, Jacov,” Rosenzweig said as Buck pulled away from the curb. “The smell is all over you. And I saw you atop the table.”
“You can smell my breath!” he said, leaning forward.
“I don’t want to smell your breath!”
“No! Come on! I’ll prove it!” Jacov breathed heavily into Rosenzweig’s face, and Chaim grimaced and turned away.
Rosenzweig looked at Buck. “He had garlic today, but I do not smell alcohol.”
“Of course not!” Jacov said. “I was preaching! God gave me the boldness! I am one of the 144,000 witnesses, as Rabbi Ben-Judah says! I will be an evangelist for God!”
Chaim slumped in his seat and raised both hands. “Oy,” he said. “I wish you were drunk.”
After hearing what had gone on behind the scenes in Israel, Ken agreed it was likely Carpathia would manufacture “some tragedy outside his control, somethin’ he can blame on somebody else, but no matter how you slice it, people we care about are gonna die.”
“I don’t want to be foolhardy, Ken,” Rayford said. “But I’m not going to hide here and just hope they get out.”
“I been sky-jockeyin’ that son-in-law of yours since the disappearances, and you’d have to go some to be more foolhardy than that boy. We’re gonna hafta get in touch with your copilot over there though. I can teach you a lot about the Gulfstream, but nobody can put it down without a runway.”
“Meaning?”
“You’re gonna be looking at a quick pickup, right? Probably from this Rosen-whatever estate?”
“Yeah, I’m going to suggest to Tsion that he announce plans for Saturday, something Carpathia will believe he wouldn’t want to miss. Then we get in there after midnight Friday and get them out of there.”
“Unless they meet us somewhere near the airport, we’re going to have to drop in and get ’em. And that means a chopper.”
“Can’t we rent one? I could ask David Hassid, our guy inside the GC, to have one waiting for us at Jerusalem or Ben Gurion.”
“Fine, but we’re gonna need two fliers. No way McCullum can get away to help us.”
“What am I, chopped liver?”
Ken smacked himself in the head. “Listen to me,” he said. “What an idiot! You’re trained in a copter, then?”
“Mac brought me up to speed. I land near the complex and shuttle them to you at the airport, right?”
“You’d better get a layout of the place before we go. You’re going to have precious little time as it is, puttin’ one of them noisy jobs down in a residential area. Somebody sees you in their yard, the gendarmes’ll be there before you can get airborne again.”
“Does your wife know where you’ve been?” Rosenzweig asked Jacov as Buck pulled in front of his apartment building.
“I called her. She wants to know what in the world I’m talking about.”
“Why did you go to that awful place first?”
“I escaped to Stefan’s house. He wanted to go. I thought, what better place to start preaching?”
“You’re a fool,” Rosenzweig said.
“Yes I am!”
Buck tossed Jacov his cell phone. “Call your wife so you don’t scare her to death when you walk in.”
But before Jacov could dial, the phone rang. “What’s this?” he said. “I didn’t do that.”
“Push Send and say, ‘Buck’s phone.’”
It was Chloe. “She needs to talk with you right away, Mr. Williams.”
Buck took the phone and told Jacov, “Wait here until we can warn your wife you’re coming.”
Chloe told Buck about the call from her father and his request for a schematic of Rosenzweig’s estate. “I’ll bring it up when it’s appropriate,” Buck whispered.
Later, when he finally drove through the gates at Chaim’s place, the time didn’t seem right to raise the issue of the schematic. Rosenzweig was still a Carpathia sympathizer and would not understand. He might even spill the beans. Buck remained in the car as Rosenzweig got out.
“You’re not coming in?”
“May I borrow your car for a while?”
“Take the Mercedes.”
“This will be fine,” Buck said. “If Chloe is still up, tell her she can call me.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’d rather not say. If you don’t know, you don’t have to lie if anyone asks.”
“This is entirely too much skullduggery for me, Cameron. Be safe and hurry back, would you? You and your friends have another big day tomorrow. Or I should say today.”
Buck drove straight to the Wailing Wall. As he expected, after the squabbling between the two witnesses and Carpathia and the threats Nicolae made on international television, huge crowds pressed near the fence where Eli and Moishe held court. The GC was well represented, armed guards ringing the crowd.
Buck parked far from the Temple Mount and moseyed up like a curious tourist. Moishe and Eli stood back-to-back with Eli facing the crowd. Buck had never seen them in that position and wondered if Moishe was somehow on the lookout. Eli was speaking in his forceful, piercing voice, but at that moment he was competing with the head of the GC guard unit and his bullhorn. The guard was making his announcement in several languages—first in Hebrew, then in Spanish, then in an Asian tongue Buck couldn’t place. Finally, he spoke a broken English with a Hebrew accent, and Buck realized the GC guard was an Israeli.
“Attention, ladies and gentlemen! I have been asked by the Global Community supreme commander to remind citizens of the proclamation from His Excellency, Potentate Nicolae Carpathia—” here the crowd erupted into cheering and applause—“that the two men you see before you are under house arrest. They are confined to this area until the end of the Meeting of the Witnesses Friday night. If they leave this area before that, any GC personnel or private citizen is within his rights to detain them by force, to wound them, or to exterminate them. Further, if they are seen anywhere, repeat anywhere, after that time, they shall be put to death.”
The crowd near the fence cheered wildly again, laughed, taunted, pointed fingers, and spat toward the witnesses. But still the crowd hung back at least thirty feet, having heard of, if not seen, those whom the witnesses had killed. While many claimed the two capriciously murdered people who got too close, Buck himself had seen a mercenary soldier charge at them with a high-powered rifle. He was incinerated by fire from the witnesses’ mouths. Another man who had leaped toward them with a knife had seemed to hit an invisible wall and fell dead.
The witnesses, of course, seemed unaffected by the proclamation or the guard with the bullhorn. They remained motionless and back-to-back, but there was a vast difference between how they now appeared and how they had looked when Buck first saw them. Because of t
he incredible interest drawn to them by the meetings televised from Kollek Stadium and their being mentioned by both Leon Fortunato and Carpathia himself, the news media had converged upon this place.
Gigantic klieg lights illuminated the area, a glaring spotlight bathing the witnesses. But neither squinted nor turned from the glare. The extra light only served to emphasize their unique features: strong, angular faces, deep-set dark eyes in craggy sockets under bushy brows.
No one ever saw them come or go; none knew where they were from. They had appeared strange and weird from the beginning, wearing their burlap-like sackcloth robes and appearing barefoot. They were muscular and yet bony, with leathery skin; dark, lined faces; and long, scraggly hair and beards. Some said they were Moses and Elijah reincarnate, but if Buck had to guess, he would have said they were the two Old Testament characters themselves. They looked and smelled centuries old, a smoky, dusty aroma following them.
Their eyes were afire, their voices supernaturally strong and audible for a mile without amplification.
An Israeli shouted a question in Hebrew, and the GC guard translated it into all the languages. “He wants to know if he would be punished for killing these men now, where they stand.” The crowd cheered anew as each people group understood what he said. Finally, the GC guard answered.
“If someone was to kill them this very night, he would be punished only if an eyewitness testified against him. I don’t know that there are any eyewitnesses here at all.”
The crowd laughed and agreed, including the other guards. Buck recoiled. The GC had just given permission for anyone to murder the witnesses without fear of reprisal! Buck was tempted to warn anyone so foolish that he had personally seen what happened to previous would-be assassins, but Eli beat him to it.
Barely moving his lips but speaking so loudly he seemed to be shouting at the top of his lungs, Eli addressed the crowd. “Come nigh and question not this warning from the Lord of Hosts. He who would dare come against the appointed servants of the Most High God, yea the lampstands of the one who sits high above the heavens, the same shall surely die!”
The crowd and the guards stumbled back at the force of his voice. But they soon inched forward again, taunting. Eli erupted again. “Tempt not the chosen ones, for to come against the voices crying in the wilderness is to appoint one’s own carcass to burn before the eyes of other jackals. God himself will consume your flesh, and it will drip from your own bones before your breath has expired!”
A wild, cackling man brandished a bulky, high-powered rifle. Buck held his breath as the man waved it above the crowd, and the rest screamed warnings at him. The weapon had a sight on the stock that identified it as a sniper’s rifle with kill power from a thousand yards. Why, Buck wondered, would a man with such a weapon risk showing it within reach of the witnesses and their proven power to destroy?
The GC guard stepped between the man and the wrought-iron fence, behind which the witnesses stood. He spoke to the man in Hebrew, but it was clear he did not understand. “English!” the man screamed, but he did not sound American. Buck couldn’t make out his accent. “If you do this thing,” the guard started over in English, “as a service to the Global Community, you must take full responsibility for the consequences.”
“You said there were no eyewitnesses!”
“Sir, the whole world is watching on television and the Internet.”
“Then I’ll be a hero! Out of my way!”
The guard did not move until the man leveled the weapon at him. Then the guard skipped into the darkness, and the man stood alone, facing the fence. And nothing else. The witnesses were gone.
“Threaten to burn my flesh, will you?” the man raged. “Face this firepower first, you cowards!”
The GC guard came back on the bullhorn, speaking urgently. “We shall search the area behind the fence! If the two are not there, they are in violation of the direct order of the potentate himself and may be shot at will by anyone without fear of indictment!”
CHAPTER 8
Though it was now the wee hours of Thursday morning on the Temple Mount, the atmosphere was festive. Hundreds milled about, chattering about the gall of two old men to defy Carpathia and make themselves vulnerable to attack by anyone in the world. They were fair game, and within minutes they would surely be dead.
Buck knew better, of course. He had sat under the teaching of Bruce Barnes and then Tsion Ben-Judah, and he knew what the witnesses meant by “the due time.” Bible prophecy called for the witnesses to be given the power by God to prophesy one thousand, two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. Both Bruce and Tsion held that those days were counted from the time of the signing of an agreement between Antichrist and Israel for seven years of peace—which also coincided with the seven-year tribulation. Such an agreement had been signed only a little more than two years before, and 1,260 days divided by 365 equaled three and a half years. Buck calculated that the due time was more than a year away.
Suddenly, from high on the hillside called the Mount of Olives came the loud preaching of the two in unison. The crowds began to run that way, murder in their throats. Despite the confusion and noise and armed guards engaging their weapons while on the run, the witnesses spoke with such volume that every word was clear.
“Harken unto us, servants of the Lord God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth! Lo, we are the two olive trees, the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth. If any man will hurt us, fire proceedeth out of our mouths and devoureth our enemies. If any man dare attempt to hurt us, he must in that manner be killed! Hear and be warned!
“We have been granted the power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of our prophecy. Yea, we have power over waters to turn them to blood and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as we will.
“And what is our prophecy, O ye generation of snakes and vipers who have made the holy city of Messiah’s death and resurrection likened unto Egypt and Sodom? That Jesus of Bethlehem, the son of the Virgin Mary, was in the beginning with God, and he was God, and he is God. Yea, he fulfilled all the prophecies of the coming Messiah, and he shall reign and rule now and forevermore, world without end, amen!”
The rabid cries of angry Israelis and tourists filled the air. Buck followed, his own panting filling his ears. No media lights had reached the witnesses, and nothing illuminated them from the sky, yet they shone bright as day in the dark grove of olive trees. It was an awesome, fearful sight, and Buck wanted to fall to his knees and worship the God who was true to his word.
As the crowd reached the base of the sloping hill and slipped in the dewy grass, Buck caught up. “It is ours to bring rain,” the witnesses shouted, and a freezing gush of water poured from the skies and drenched the crowd, including Buck. The place had not seen a drop in twenty-four months, and the people craned their necks, pointed their faces to the sky, and opened their mouths. But the rain had stopped the instant it began, as if Eli and Moishe had opened and shut a tap in one motion.
“And it is ours to shut heaven for the days of our prophecy!”
The crowd was stunned, complaining and murmuring, grumbling threats anew. As they started again toward the illumined pair on the hillside, now less than a hundred yards away, the prophets stopped them with their voices alone.
“Stand and hear us, O ye wicked ones of Israel! You who would blaspheme the name of the Lord God your maker by sacrificing animals in the temple you claim to have erected in his honor! Know ye not that Jesus the Messiah was the lamb that was slain to take away the sins of the world? Your sacrifices of animal blood are a stench in the nostrils of your God! Turn from your wicked ways, O sinners! Face yourselves for the corpses you already are! Advance not against the chosen ones whose time has not yet been accomplished!”
But sure enough, as Buck watched in horror, two GC guards rushed past him and past the crowd, weapons raised. Slipping and sliding on the moist hillside, their uniforms became muddy and grass stained. They crawled comb
at style up the hill, illuminated by the light radiating from the witnesses.
“Woe unto you who would close your ears to the warnings of the chosen ones!” the witnesses shouted. “Flee to the caves to save yourselves! Your mission is doomed! Your bodies shall be consumed! Your souls shall be beyond redemption!”
But the guards pressed on. Buck squinted, anticipating the awfulness of it. The crowd chanted and raised fists at the witnesses, urging the guards to open fire. Gunshots resounded, echoing, deafening, the exploding cartridges producing yellow and orange bursts from the barrels of the weapons.
The witnesses stood side by side, gazing impassively at their attackers, who lay on their bellies a hundred feet down the slope. The crowd fell silent, as did the rifles, everyone staring, wondering how the guards could have missed from such close range. The guards rolled onto their sides, ejecting shell magazines and replacing them with loud clicks. They opened fire again, filling the valley with violent explosions.
The witnesses had not moved. Buck’s eyes were locked on them as blinding white light burst from their mouths, and they appeared to expectorate a stream of phosphorous vapor directly at the guards. The attackers had no time to even recoil as they ignited. Their weapons remained supported by the bones of their arms and hands as their flesh was vaporized, and their rib cages and pelvises made ghastly silhouettes against the grass.
Within seconds the white heat turned their rifles to dripping, sizzling liquid and their bones to ash. The would-be assassins smoldered in piles next to each other as the crowd fled in panic, screaming, cursing, crying, nearly knocking Buck over as they pushed past. His emotions conflicted, as always, when he saw humans die. The witnesses had declared that when the attackers died, their souls would be lost. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t been warned.
Horrified at the loss of life and the eternal damnation the guards had gambled against and lost, Buck felt his knees weaken. He couldn’t take his eyes off the witnesses. The brightness of their killing fire still burned in his eyes, and it was as if the light that had shone from them was now gone. In the darkness, blinking against the spots and streaks that remained, he made out that they were slowly descending the mount. Why, he wondered, did they not just appear wherever they wanted to go, as they had seemed to transfigure themselves into the stadium the night before and from the Temple Mount to the Mount of Olives just now? They were beyond figuring, and as they neared him, he held his breath.