Stung

by Jerry B. Jenkins

  “Wish I could hear this,” Judd said.

  “We’re not far from my house,” Samuel said. “We can watch there.”

  Lionel pulled Judd aside. “His father’s working with the GC!”

  “He trusted me with the videotape. He’s okay. He wants to help.”

  “But he doesn’t have the mark.”

  “Maybe we can change that,” Judd said.

  Conrad and Darrion returned and met Vicki and the others near the shed to discover that still no one had seen Melinda.

  “I say we head toward town,” Darrion said.

  Vicki’s weird friend Charlie walked up. “What are you guys going to do with her after you catch her?”

  Vicki looked at the others and shrugged. “Drag her back here?”

  Conrad scratched his chin. “I don’t care. I just want to find her.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to rat us out,” Vicki said. “Maybe she just wants to get away.”

  Shelly agreed. “Tsion’s message could have been too much for her. She might just need time.”

  “And she might run into the GC,” Conrad said, “which would be the end for her. Let me at least stay on the road awhile.”

  Judd and Lionel crept to the back door of Samuel’s house and followed him in. Emergency vehicles screamed by, sirens blaring. Samuel answered the ringing phone. “My father,” he mouthed.

  “Did he tell you what’s happening?” Judd said as Samuel hung up.

  “He told me to stay inside. The crazy zealots are killing people.”

  Samuel turned on the television, and the photo of the guard flashed on the screen again. Another photo appeared beside the guard.

  “It’s Buck!” Lionel shouted.

  The news anchor looked grim. “Global Community forces believe this videotape reveals this man as the murderer at Teddy Kollek Stadium. The suspect has been identified as American Cameron Williams, former employee of the GC publishing division. Williams is reportedly staying with Rabbi Tsion Ben-Judah at the home of Israeli Nobel Prize–winner Dr. Chaim Rosenzweig.”

  Lionel’s radio squawked. “Proceeding to the Rosenzweig estate,” a man said.

  “That is only a few blocks from here,” Samuel said.

  Leon Fortunato, Nicolae Carpathia’s right-hand man, appeared on the screen at a news conference. “We will do what we must to bring these criminals to justice. We have witnesses to the act, a videotape recording, and several of the local committee members in custody. Rest assured, we will bring to justice the man or woman who did this.”

  “Buck was running away when the guard was shot,” Lionel said. “The videotape has to show that.”

  “The truth never stops these people,” Judd said.

  Samuel brought snacks, and Judd and Lionel ate as they watched the news and monitored the guard’s radio.

  “Has your dad always worked for the GC?” Lionel said.

  Samuel shook his head. “Only since the murder of Dr. Ben-Judah’s family. My father had helped them in the past, but that changed when the rabbi abandoned his faith. My father went totally for the Global Community and Nicolae Carpathia. He works—”

  A roar went over the house. Judd ran to the window and saw a brilliant flash.

  “A GC chopper,” Samuel said.

  “Closing in on Buck and Tsion, I bet,” Judd said. “We have to help.”

  “You can’t go there,” Samuel said.

  “These are our friends,” Judd said. “We might be able to do something.”

  Samuel told them how to find the Rosenzweig estate, then turned on a light at the rear of the house. “If this light is off when you return, tap on my window and I’ll let you in.”

  The night air was cool and the streets almost deserted. Judd and Lionel rounded a corner and saw two squad cars parked in front of a huge gate. They could hear the chopper nearby.

  Lionel listened to the banter of the GC peacekeepers on the walkie-talkie. Chaim Rosenzweig wasn’t letting them inside.

  The chopper hovered over the estate, then put down on top of the house.

  “They’re going in through the roof,” Lionel said.

  Judd peered through the darkness at the GC insignia on the side of the chopper. Three figures leaped into the helicopter just before it lifted off and headed north, a few feet above the rooftops.

  Another chopper approached from the south and hovered directly over them. The frantic voice of the pilot came over the radio, trying to communicate with the other chopper.

  “Tsion and Buck have to be in the first chopper,” Judd said.

  “Who else was with them?” Lionel said. “Chloe?”

  Judd shrugged. “Let’s head back to Samuel’s house before they spot us.”

  Just after 1 A.M. Judd and Lionel found the light off. Judd tapped lightly on Samuel’s window. A light came on over the door. Judd and Lionel climbed the steps and waited.

  Something moved behind them.

  Samuel opened the door and smiled. “I knew it! I told you they’d come back!”

  Judd turned. A man stood behind them, holding a gun. “Good work, Son.”

  14

  “YOU LIED|” Judd said as the man shoved him and Lionel inside. Samuel led them to two chairs in the living room.

  “You were trying to help Ben-Judah escape,” Samuel said. “Doesn’t matter what I did to catch you.”

  “He won’t escape,” Samuel’s father said.

  “You can’t hold us here,” Judd said. “We didn’t do anything.”

  “Shut up,” Samuel’s father said. He turned to his son. “How’d you find them?”

  “You know I felt guilty about shooting that video. Then, when it was stolen—”

  “Stolen?” Judd said.

  “Be quiet!” Samuel’s father said.

  “Tonight I went to the meeting to see if I could expose some of the zealots.” Samuel glared at Judd. “They preach hatred. They think their way is the only way. Then I saw Judd, the very one who had taken the video. I knew if I could get him to come back here, you would know what to do.”

  “I told you to stay away from the stadium,” Samuel’s father said. “You could have been killed.” The man sighed. “But finding these Americans might help us.”

  “They knew some of the men arrested at the university tonight,” Samuel said. “And they are friends with Ben-Judah and the others staying with Rosenzweig.”

  Judd said, “So the potentate was lying when he promised protection for the witnesses?”

  “Carpathia does not lie,” Samuel’s father said. “You saw what the zealots did to him and the supreme pontiff. They were completely—”

  “I was there,” Judd said. “Why are you working with the GC? Were you afraid they’d find out you helped Ben-Judah’s family?”

  “How did you know—”

  “Your son told me before he gave me the video of the murders,” Judd said.

  “I did not!” Samuel shouted. “I tried to help you, and you repay me by stealing?”

  “The question is how much you know,” Samuel’s father said, “and whether you can help us capture the fugitives.”

  “Never,” Lionel said, “even if we knew where they were.”

  The phone rang. Samuel’s father handed his gun to Samuel and hurried into the next room to answer it. “This is Goldberg,” Judd heard him say. “I had to leave … no, I did not realize that, sir … how many?”

  Samuel turned on the television to more reports of the killing at the stadium. Finally, Mr. Goldberg returned.

  “Your friends are gone,” he said. “They stole a Global Community helicopter and flew to Jerusalem Airport. All of them escaped onto a plane except one. He’s dead.”

  The phone rang again.

  “Who’s dead?” Lionel said.

  Judd shook his head. “He might be lying.”

  Samuel turned up the television. Lionel whispered, “My ID says I’m Greg Butler, but if they find out I’m a Morale Monitor …”

&nbs
p; “Did they fingerprint you?” Judd said.

  “Yeah,” Lionel said. “And they printed you when you and Taylor Graham were arrested, right?”

  Judd sighed. “Our IDs won’t do us any good if they check the prints. We have to get out of here.”

  From the next room Judd heard Mr. Goldberg say, “I may have more answers after I question these two.”

  Samuel glanced at Judd and moved toward the door. “What’s the matter, Father?”

  Judd rushed Samuel and knocked him to the ground, the gun clattering to the floor. Before Judd or Lionel could reach it, Mr. Goldberg ran in and grabbed it. “Stop!”

  Judd flung open a door just as the gun went off. Wood splintered above his head as he and Lionel dove for cover.

  Judd swung the door shut, leaving him and Lionel in darkness. The room smelled musty. Mr. Goldberg jiggled the doorknob and put his weight against the door.

  “Good choice,” Mr. Goldberg said, laughing. He locked the door from the outside. “That should keep you until the GC arrive.”

  Judd felt along the wall for a light switch. He flipped it on and saw that they were at the top of a landing. Stairs led to the basement.

  “Find a way to block the door,” Judd said.

  “But they locked it from the other—”

  “Just block the door. Hurry!”

  Judd raced down the stairs and got his bearings. In one corner he found a large dresser. He pulled out the drawers and moved it away from the wall. Behind the dresser he found a doorway that had been nailed shut. He quickly located a toolbox and found a hammer.

  Lionel came down the stairs, out of breath. “I did the best I could,” he gasped. “How did you know about this door?”

  “Dan and Nina led me through here once,” Judd said.

  Judd pried off the wood, trying to be quiet. He had two corners free when he heard a siren outside. “That’s the GC,” he said, and he and Lionel attacked the door. As they pried the last plank away, footsteps sounded overhead. Someone tried to open the door at the top of the stairs, then smashed it, splintering the wood. Judd felt the chill of the night air as he and Lionel pried open the secret door.

  He threw the hammer and burst the light bulb that lit the room. Someone yelled, “They’ve got a gun!”

  Judd and Lionel rushed out into the night and nearly ran Samuel over. “I knew you’d find the passage,” he whispered.

  Judd braced for a fight. “Stay out of our way!”

  Samuel slipped them a piece of paper. “Go to this address. They will take you in, no questions asked.”

  “What?” Lionel said. “No way we’ll trust you.”

  “Go,” Samuel said. “I will explain later.”

  They ran to a main street, where many of the witnesses still milled about. A helicopter passed, its light scanning the crowd. Judd and Lionel blended with the others. Judd read the address Samuel gave them.

  “You’re not—,” Lionel said.

  “What choice do we have?” Judd said.

  Lionel sighed. “A hotel?”

  “How much money do you have?” Judd said.

  Lionel emptied his pockets. Not enough.

  “The GC will check the hotels anyway,” Judd said. He held up the paper to the light. “This is our only good option.”

  Judd asked for directions several times before they found the right street. As they moved farther from the Old City, fewer people passed them. Finally they were alone outside a tall apartment building. Judd rang the buzzer, but there was no answer. He rang again.

  “We have company,” Lionel said.

  Judd glanced around. A Global Community squad car sat across the street.

  “Let’s run for it,” Judd said. “You go to the right—”

  But the door buzzed and they slipped inside to find a dark elevator. Someone stood in the shadows. A gun clicked.

  “Face forward,” a man said.

  He was short with dark hair, a large nose, and a mustache. He pointed the semiautomatic pistol at Judd. “I said face forward.”

  Judd turned. The man told him to punch the top button. The rickety elevator slowly climbed to the twelfth floor.

  “Who sent you?” the man said.

  “Samuel,” Judd said. “Don’t know his last name. He was friends—”

  “Were you followed?” the man interrupted.

  “Not that we know of,” Lionel said. “But this GC squad car—”

  “We saw,” the man said. “A routine check. But your timing was not exactly perfect.”

  “Who’s we?” Judd said.

  The elevator opened. “To your right,” the man said.

  Judd and Lionel stepped onto faded brown carpet. The hallway was dark. Several sockets had no lights. At the end of the hall was a stairwell. “Keep going,” the man said.

  Judd and Lionel climbed the stairs to what looked like a janitor’s room. The door opened, and they were greeted by a woman wearing a veil.

  The large room they were in led to several smaller rooms and a hallway that looked as if it ran the entire length of the building.

  The man locked the door behind him. “Sit,” he said.

  Lionel and Judd sat on a shabby couch. Stuffing showed at the edges of the cushions. The woman left the room and quietly closed the door. She came back a moment later and whispered something to the man.

  “There are people sleeping,” the man said.

  Judd sat forward. “Who are you, and where are we?”

  The man turned on a lamp and leaned close. He pulled back his thick, black hair and showed them the sign of the believer on his forehead.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Judd said.

  “I wanted to make sure you were not followed,” the man said. “My wife just told me the squad car is gone. I am Jamal. I run the apartment complex.”

  “You’re the manager?” Lionel said.

  “I would love to claim that title, but I’m afraid janitor would be closer to the truth. I will explain more, but you must first tell me what kind of trouble you are in.”

  Judd told the man about the Meeting of the Witnesses and going to Samuel’s house. “How does Samuel know you?” Judd said. “He’s not a believer.”

  “I do not know,” the man said. “Perhaps the Global Community has set a trap. It troubles me to think a GC employee’s son has our information.”

  “Are there other believers here?” Judd said.

  “We kept many of the witnesses here throughout the meetings,” Jamal said. “As many as a hundred per night. Most of them are gone, but a few are leaving tomorrow.”

  “We had a friend taken by the GC,” Lionel said. “Mr. Stein is our only way back to the States.”

  “They will likely question and release him, unless they uncover something,” Jamal said. “Contacts will keep us informed.”

  Judd had more questions, but Jamal held up a hand. “It is almost dawn. You are safe. That is all you need to know right now.”

  Jamal showed them a room with four beds. “Sleep, and may God watch over you and your friends.”

  Mark’s mind reeled as he drove the motorcycle through the old neighborhood. He wanted to tell his aunt about John’s death and see if he could help her, but after tracking her through various GC emergency shelters, Mark discovered she had been transferred to the same furniture store, which had been converted to a makeshift hospital, where Ryan had died. The man at the front wouldn’t let him through, but Mark found a back entrance and searched a filing cabinet filled with patients’ names. He found his aunt’s name on a list of patients. She had died four days earlier.

  Mark found the morgue and asked to see his aunt’s body. “I’m sorry, son,” the attendant said, “but a person unclaimed for that long is cremated.”

  Mark drove back to his aunt’s house. There, he watched the Meeting of the Witnesses on Judd’s laptop. It was hard to concentrate. He felt guilty for not being with his aunt when she needed him.

  Not knowing what to do next, Mark
decided to visit Z at the gas station. Z fed Mark and gave him a place to sleep. They talked.

  “You haven’t always seen eye to eye with Judd and Vicki, have you?” Z said.

  “They don’t see eye to eye with each other.”

  “But you were hooked up with the militia,” Z said.

  “I should have listened to them,” Mark said, “but this is different. I don’t feel like I’ve got a place there.”

  Z nodded. “I’ve been reading in the Bible about Paul and Barnabas. They disagreed and had to separate, and there were bad feelings, I guess. But later they worked it out.”

  Mark tried to sleep but couldn’t. He joined Z early the next morning to watch the coverage of the meeting in Israel. By Friday night he had made his decision.

  “I’m going back to see if I can hash it out with them,” Mark said.

  Early Saturday morning Mark headed back to the schoolhouse. At 9:00 A.M. he wound through the small town near the access road. He noticed a GC security vehicle and several officers.

  Mark rode as close as he could without drawing attention. Several townspeople stood watching.

  “What’s going on?” Mark said to an older man.

  “They caught some girl,” the man said. “Been talking on the radio for quite a while. They got her in the back of the squad car.”

  Mark rode past the officers and stole a glance at the car. The door was slightly open. Mark gasped. Melinda sat in the backseat, crying. Her hands were cuffed.

  15

  MARK parked his cycle and walked past a few stores. He wondered if Melinda had told the peacekeepers about the Young Trib Force and their hideout. He studied shop windows as he listened to the squawking radios.

  “Still waiting for the fingerprint ID,” one officer said.

  “She sure looks like the photo,” another said. “Wonder how she wound up here?”

  Mark walked into a small grocery store and watched the GC officers through the window. He bought a pack of gum and asked the girl at the cash register what happened.

  “She ran in here out of breath,” the girl said. “Real dirty. Looked like she’d spent the night in the woods. I figured it was one of those women who escaped from the GC prison I’ve been hearing about on the news.”