The Nephilim Imperatives: Dark Sentences (The Second Coming Chronicles Book 2)

by Terry James

  The big helicopters rendezvoused to the west of the valley floor from which they had lifted. The infrared scope in Jenkins’ bird pulsed brightly, giving view of the terrain below. Lights would not be needed while the three choppers made their way toward the last given coordinates of the five interlopers.

  “Tell your men to stop them, when they are spotted. I don’t want a one of them to survive!” Jenkins shouted to be heard. “They must not survive!”

  The three craft cut through the blackness, their position lights turned off. The advanced instruments available to the flyers made each other visible, allowing sufficient distance between each to be maintained while they roared toward their human and canine targets.

  “Don’t worry, sir,” the pilot in Jenkins’ helicopter shouted above the scream of the chopper engines. “Once we lock on the laser sights, the 30 millimeters will chew ‘em up!”

  Jeddy stopped a few meters ahead, and Saxton put his hand up to forewarn the others following to pull up.

  “Looks like Jeddy has found the ridge overlooking that valley,” the Brit said, walking cautiously beside the rottweiler, who looked up at him while Nigel shined the flashlight beam along the ridge.

  David walked beside Saxton. “What do you think, Nigel? Looks like we can’t go much farther than this.”

  “Looks like.” The Brit continued to shine Zeke’s light along the ridge, trying to see beyond the overhang. The light pierced the darkness of the drop-off but gave no illumination of any ground of substance. The drop-off was at least 500-feet, Saxton figured silently. The cliffs had looked to be relatively uniform in distance to the valley floor when he had overlooked the area from his mountain side hideaway several days before. What to do now?

  “Well, the action is, apparently, according to what you say, down there in that valley area, right? We’ve got to find a way down,” David said. “The Lord brought us this far. He will show the way.”

  Saxton grinned, then said with a slight laugh in his voice, “Yes, well, chap. This is the time for…the Lord… to do His thing, because yours truly is at a loss as to how to attack this cliff with the ladies in tow.”

  The dog heard them first and growled a whine of warning.

  “What’s wrong, boy?” Nigel knelt and put an arm upon Jeddy’s back.

  They heard it, then: the whine of numerous helicopters.

  Nigel switched off the flashlight.

  “Even with the light off, they will have no problem finding us with the instruments –the night vision things,” the Brit said to David.

  The others gathered around Saxton, who surveyed the night in the direction from which the thumping came. He knew they didn’t have a chance on this open ground. The attackers’ terrain-scanning night-vision scopes would easily find them. Even if they were in a hiding place, the infrared would locate them, expose them to the gunships’ withering fire, should the aggressors decide to use the weapons at their disposal.

  He said nothing to the others. To tell them they were about to die –should that be the case—would be cruel. Better to just let it happen. The pilot in the lead helicopter spoke loudly into the helmet microphone. “You locked on?”

  The other chopper pilots answered, “That’s a roger.”

  “Get me in a position I can watch this, Captain,” George Jenkins said in a pleased snarl. “Let them have the fun. I want to watch.”

  The pilot ordered the others in to do the devastating job while he veered, lifted over the other two choppers, and followed them to their target in a higher attitude.

  Nigel Saxton shouted to the others, “Down! Get down –flat on the snow!”

  Clark held Jeddy while he awaited the inevitable stream of deadly fire from their attackers.

  David reached to the nonactivated flashlight Saxton held in his right hand.

  “Dear Lord, use this weapon…sir, in the name of Jesus!”

  He pushed the button at its center and the beam flashed through the night, just as the lead copters came within visual range. The searchlights came on at the helicopters’ bottom portions just as the beam from the flashlight contacted the pilot’s eyes.

  Both pilots screamed simultaneously, their eyes receiving the excruciating, fiery impact of the light.

  The five in the snow saw the results at the same instant Jenkins saw the explosion and night-rending fireball. The two birds collided, and then tumbled to the valley floor 200 meters from the ridge.

  A chill of fear hit him with the realization. The thought doused his zeal for the havoc he had planned to inflict upon the intruders.

  George Jenkins screamed, his eyes wide with fear.

  “Let’s get out of here! Quick!”

  Chapter 24

  Jeddy barked from somewhere to Saxton’s right, causing the Brit to point the beam of Zeke’s flashlight in the rottweiler’s direction. He saw the dog’s rear disappear over the ridge, causing his heart to leap in his chest. Had his friend gone over the edge to his death?

  “Jeddy!” He called to the dog, whose head popped up above the edge of the precipice.

  Saxton, followed by the others, hurried to where Jeddy now stood, looking back toward the place he had been moments before.

  “The light illuminated the area and they all moved closer for a look.

  “It’s a pathway!” Kristi’s excited announcement drew all in for a close examination.

  “Sure is,” Clark said, his arm around Kristi, and peering over the edge of the cliff to see the narrow path.

  “Looks like it’s been well-used,” Cassie said from beside David.

  “Yeah,” Prouse said, leaning over to assess the path once use for human traffic. “Probably Indians –pardon me—Native Americans used it for getting down to the valley.”

  “Good boy, Peanut!” Kristi dropped to her knees and embraced the rottweiler, who licked her face before she could pull away. “You found our path for us!”

  Jeddy didn’t understand the reason for the praise heaped upon him while they all congratulated and hugged him. He accepted it happily, but really wanted to get back on the six-foot-wide road of stone that spiraled in serpentine fashion all the way to the valley floor.

  Hans Sheivold had not returned to the room where Mark lay strapped to the gurney. It had been at least two hours since they removed him from the area that appeared to be an operating room.

  The scientist and his colleagues had looked frustrated, even angered, while they stared at their monitors and their data upon strange-looking screens inset within their control panels. They had adjusted and readjusted the pronged device Mark wore at four points upon his head while they labored to extract the things Sheivold told him they must have to complete the work on the two strange, beautiful children floating in the viscous liquid. The white-haired little boys of under two years were, Sheivold said, his and Lori’s grandchildren. But who, what were the others who contributed in the mixture that produced the little boys who were –according to the scientist—not born, but created from genetic materials? Cloned? No. through processes far more advanced…more sinister…

  Lori and Morgan. Where were they? He struggled in vain to free himself from the metallic bands that secured him to the gurney.

  His wife and daughter. He had to get them. Get them out of this hellish place. He prayed for the –how many times was it? “Please, Lord, help me to get them away from this place…”

  “I’m sorry,” Mr. Lansing, the man said, coming to Mark and looking down at him. “There are problems. But, not to worry. You will yet be able to contribute to our budding Nephilim crop…”

  Blake Robbins, still wearing the dark goggles, looked to again be the human rather than the monster he metamorphosed into when he had removed the goggles earlier. The topic of which he spoke was anything but human, Mark knew from his study, his conversations with his wife, her mother, and with Christopher, Susie, and Randy Prouse. The Nephilim were, many believed, the offspring of that antediluvian visitation the time before the world-wide flood of
Noah’s day.

  Robbins used the very word, “Nephilim,” without hesitation. He knew that Mark understood the term…

  “These will soon grow to bring the kingdom of enlightenment –of light, itself—thus to produce a new world paradigm,” Robbins said, moving about the small room checking various computer screens while he talked.

  “One will serve the other, will prepare the way. Much like the Baptist paved the way for the one called Jesus.”

  Mark’s senses dimmed with shock of realization of what the monster within Blake Robbins was telling him. The story of Revelation chapter 13!

  “Nigel! What’s going on out there?”

  Randall Prouse had awaited the phone call through the night. The Brit’s accented words were like a dose of caffeine injected directly into his octogenarian veins.

  “We have reached the valley floor, Dr. Prouse. Sorry to be tardy with the call. We’ve had a bit of adventure, I’m afraid.”

  The British, Randy thought with a fleeting grin. Always unflappable –always the understated.

  “What happened, Nigel?” he asked, impatient to know their circumstance.

  “Helicopters attacked early this morning. We were sitting ducks, as they say. But, this instrument, this flashlight given me by the old hermit, apparently has properties beyond the explainable.”

  “What properties? What happened?”

  “It has--I can’t think of an appropriate way to say it--saved us on several occasions. With the hairy things, the Yeti-type things. Then, Cassie’s toe: a blister that crippled her was healed when the light fell upon the wound. And, then, a few hours ago, we were attacked by the choppers. David grabbed the light from me, just as the machines were about to fire on us. He shone the beam at the copters and the things, they just crashed into each other and exploded.”

  “Praise God!” Prouse said, rolling his eyes toward the hotel room ceiling.

  “What’s that?” Saxton said, unable to hear the archaeologist’s expression of thanks to the Almighty.

  “Nothing, Nigel. What happened then?”

  “Jed…the dog… found a pathway just over the lip of the cliff. It winds to the valley floor, which is where we are presently.”

  “What’s your plan?”

  “Well, it’s just turned daylight. We’ve tried to get an hour or two of rest. We will begin to look toward that strange forested area where I watched those disks vanish into the trees.”

  “They’ve taken Susie, Christopher Banyon’s wife,” Prouse said after digesting the Brit’s words.

  “Say again,” Nigel said. “Taken Susie Banyon?”

  “Yes. They abducted her from the back of the hotel. Threw her in a vehicle and left. Chris and I are certain they will take her to wherever they are holding Mark, Lori, and Morgan Lansing.”

  Prouse heard Saxton explaining to the others the fact that Susie Banyon had been kidnapped.

  “Grandpa. What do you think? What does it mean? What can we do?”

  His grandson’s voice gave Randall a shot of much-needed adrenalin, and his voice brightened.

  “David! Yes. They’ve taken Susie. Chris and I are convinced it’s for leverage in this whole thing. For some reason, and in some way, there’s a stalemate between the supernatural forces that oppose each other.”

  The archaeologist paused, considering his own words that sounded to him unbelievable, yet at the same time the truth.

  “Seems the natural world--using a human hostage—is now the method they are resorting to in order to stop our interference into their interdimensional influence upon the prophesied things Jesus foretold in Luke, Chapter 17.”

  They both let the thoughts run through their brains before David Prouse spoke.

  “Then we will find her, too, Gramps. The Lord has brought us this far. You just wouldn’t believe how He has brought us this far…”

  “Yes, Nigel told me about the things accomplished by that flashlight,” Randy interrupted.

  “Yes. And, He will accomplish the rest, as He wills.”

  Randall Prouse smiled. His son and daughter-in-law had done well with the young man.

  The black ops chief had not gone to sleep. He paced the hallway, whose walls were curved to become ceiling, then the wall on the other side of the corridor. The rounded walls were of shiny, metal-like material, giving the long passageway the appearance of a chrome-encased tunnel.

  “Is the Banyon woman here? Do you have her secured?” He asked the questions in an angry tone while he walked to and fro in the hallway.

  April Warmath stood, watching him pace.

  “Excellent. We will be there in a minute,” Jenkins said, snapping the communicator shut while striding down the corridor, followed by the woman.

  Susie stood by Lori Lansing, putting her small hand on Lori’s face. She then walked to Morgan and laid the back of her hand against the young woman’s cheek.

  She turned to the black-uniformed guards, who stood on either side of the open split in the wall.

  “What have you done to her? What’s wrong with them?” Her question was put in a tone of controlled anger. The guards said nothing, but stood stiffly, watching her movements.

  Susie turned back to the women, standing between Lori and Morgan, who lay side by side on separate gurneys several feet apart.

  She placed her hands on each of her friends’ while she prayed with head bowed.

  “Dear Heavenly Father, please bring Lori and Morgan to full consciousness and health. Protect us…”

  “Your… heavenly father… has no influence here, my dear,” George Jenkins said, coming through the split in the wall, with April Warmath trailing him.

  His interruption caused Susie to turn, a startled expression on her face.

  “Your God has no business here. This is a place for the government of the United States to conduct its business. And you, and those others are interfering,” the DOD black ops chief said, standing at the foot of the gurneys, in the space between the comatose women.

  Susie said nothing for a moment, her words then coming in a measured, calculated tone.

  “We both know that it isn’t the American government that sits at the head of your enterprise. We’ve encountered you before, or someone just like you. A Mr. Robert Cooper. His spiritually dark board of directors, not his human government, dealt him a fate that was not something to envy. Sir, I don’t know your name, but, I plead with you. Let us go. Accept Christ for salvation before it’s too late.”

  “Shut up!” April Warmath screamed at Susie, lacing her invective with profanity. “Do you know who you are speaking to, you human trash?”

  Jenkins put his hand up for calm. “Now, Miss Warmath. We are in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Mrs. Banyon has a right to speak.”

  He forced a smile. “We will have to see whose…fate… will be the less…desirable.”

  “Your lord has already been defeated. My Lord has prevailed. There’s still time for you.” Susie looked at April Warmath. “And for you, young lady. Accept Christ, before time runs out for you both.”

  Jeddy looked toward the patch of green far in the distance, his ears erecting with his wrinkled forehead. He whimpered once, causing Clark to look in the direction his sister’s rottweiler was looking.

  “What you see, Peanut?” The dog broke his concentration on his point of interest and gave Clark a lick on his face.

  “Thanks. Nothing like a bath to get the day started off right,” he said, roughing the dog’s fur with quick fingertip movements.

  “Kristi came and knelt on Jeddy’s other side and put her arm around him.

  “Good morning, hero,” she said in her sweetest voice.

  “Thanks,” Clark said, grinning at the girl, who now had his full attention.

  “Yeah. Right,” Kristi said in feigned disgust. “You can’t hold a candle to Peanut.”

  The dog tried to lap her face with his huge tongue but missed because she was quick to pull back.

  “The
others ready yet?” Clark asked, standing, stretching, and looking toward the forest again.

  “Think so. Except for the princess. She’s still primping, I think.”

  “Well, David thinks it’s well worth it,” Clark said.

  “They are cute together, aren’t they?” Kristi said with deep affection in her tone.

  “Yeah. That’s David. Cute,” he said with a chuckle.

  “Oh, you know what I mean,” she said, standing and coming to him. She put her arm around him while they looked into the distance, laying her cheek against his arm.

  “I think that we’re cute, don’t you?” Kristi said, turning her eyes up to his, which were still affixed on the area of green far distant.

  “Well, you are. That’s for sure.”

  He held her tightly and turned to face her. He pulled her to him as he bent to let his lips brush hers. They kissed more deeply, then, a lingering kiss that ended with each gazing lovingly at each other.

  “Looks like we’re ready to move out,” Nigel called from a short distance.

  They moved several minutes later toward the outcroppings of stone that had doubtless fallen over the previous centuries and decades. The gray skies looked threatening for snowfall while they walked along the lower perimeter of the cliff’s face, then toward the wreckage of the helicopters.

  “You think it’s wise to go this direction, Nigel?” David Prouse put the question while walking beside Cassie, just behind Clark and Kristi.

  “You’re probably right. Just wanted a quick look. I figure if they haven’t come searching yet, they aren’t likely to do so. This wreckage doesn’t seem to be their priority.”

  “No, but we do seem to be their priority,” Cassie said.

  “Still, let’s have a pass by, if you don’t mind,” the Brit said while they approached the black hulks of the helicopters that still smoldered from the crash of the early morning just hours before.