by Tim LaHaye
Mac panicked. How long had it been since he had ridden? Was it like riding a bicycle? Would it all come back to him? He had never been atop a steed the size of the Thoroughbreds in the stables. Any horse responded to a sure, confident hand. The beast had to know the rider was in charge. He might have to fake that bravado.
“Are you looking directly at me, soldier?” Carpathia demanded.
“No, sir,” the young Brit next to Mac said, eyes darting everywhere but at Nicolae.
“You most certainly were! You would have done better to admit it and beg forgiveness.”
“Affirmative, sir. I was, and I regret it and offer my sincerest abject apologies.”
“That is the second time you have referred to me as sir! Have you not been instructed neither to look directly at me nor to refer to me in any manner except as—”
“Yes, Excellency! My apologies, Supreme Pot—”
“And now you deign to interrupt me?”
The Brit’s voice was quavery and Mac believed his legs were about to fail him.
“Sorry,” the young man whispered.
“I cannot hear you, soldier!”
“I’m sorry, Excellency. Forgive me.”
“Who is your superior officer?”
“Commander Tenzin, sir—Excellency!”
Carpathia cursed the man. “Commander Tenzin!”
The Indian commander rushed in, bowing. “At your service, Excellency!”
“Commander, have you taught your men who I am?”
“I have, Lord Potentate.”
“All of them?”
“Yes, my king.”
“And the privilege of serving god on earth?”
“Absolutely, divine one.”
“Even this man? Your name, son?”
“Ipswich, Excellency,” he said, tears flowing now.
Mac wanted to shoot Carpathia dead and feared he just might if the potentate approached.
“Commander Tenzin, what is that in your hand?”
“A rattan rod, Excellency. I so look forward to the privilege of riding with you today.”
The rod was an inch thick and appeared to Mac about four feet long.
“If I told you that Mr. Ipswich has flouted your training, could you think of an appropriate use for your rattan rod, Commander Tenzin?”
“I could, Your Grace.”
Ipswich was whimpering.
“And would you do me the honor of employing it in my presence, for my entertainment and for the education of all?”
Without another word, Tenzin stepped forward and drew back the rod. Before Ipswich could even recoil, his commander lashed his face with such speed and force that the stick caught him just to the left of his nose, splitting both lips, cracking some teeth, and slicing his left eyelid.
Ipswich screamed and grabbed his face with both hands, bending at the waist. Tenzin brought the rod down on the back of his neck, just above the hairline, opening a gash that spattered blood on Mac’s face and chest. It was all he could do to keep from attacking the Indian.
As Ipswich pitched forward, Tenzin cracked him twice across the backside in quick succession, the second blow tearing his uniform pants. That drove him to the floor, and as he tried to scramble away, his commander followed, raining blows on his back.
Carpathia howled in delight. “When he can crawl no more, Commander Tenzin, spare the rod and put him out of his misery!”
Another soldier was quickly enlisted to replace Ipswich in line. He entered pale and shaky and quickly came to rigid attention.
“Ooh,” Carpathia moaned, clasping his hands and gazing upward. “What a way to start the day! Leon . . .”
“Yes, holy one?”
“Ask Commander Tenzin to pay a visit to Chief Akbar.”
“Certainly, lord.”
“But instruct him to punish him only to the point of near death.”
CHAPTER 4
Enoch Dumas led more than a hundred of The Place followers around the back of the abandoned Illinois shopping center. Just before eight in the morning he had begun to teach, trying to inform his people and a few interested others what should precede the Glorious Appearing. None of the heavenly preliminaries had begun, and he sensed the disappointment, doubt, and fear on the part of his little band of believers. But mostly he found himself looking over his shoulder at the main road.
Though there were few vehicles of any type about, given the fuel shortage and the crippled economy, he knew the local GC had not shut down completely. They would have to investigate a meeting of this size. And the discovery of that many people, not one bearing the mark of loyalty to Carpathia, would result in a bloodbath.
There was no longer any earthly excuse not to bear the mark, and punishment was execution on the spot by any means. Even a civilian had the right to put to death an insurgent. All that was required for exoneration from the crime of homicide was either to drag the victim to a local GC headquarters and prove he or she bore no visible mark, or to flag down a patrolling Morale Monitor or GC Peacekeeper and get him to confirm the same.
In fact, there was a healthy bounty on such offenders, and citizens loyal to the potentate competed for cash prizes. Many made their living as vigilantes, and some were famous for their impressive number of kills.
Perhaps that was why Enoch found his usually bold congregation willing to follow him from the public light of day to the relative seclusion of the other side of the empty mall. “If we knew Jesus would get here before the GC, we could stay where we are. But I, for one, do not want to have survived seven years, only to die just before He comes back.”
The group crowded into an inner court, where it was obvious they all felt safer. But they had questions.
“When’s it gonna happen?”
“What’d we miss in the prophecies?”
“Did you only think the ‘weeks’ meant ‘years,’ or what?”
“Could we be off by a long ways?”
“I don’t think so,” Enoch said. “But I don’t know. I was never a scholar or a theologian. I’m sort of a blue-collar student of all this, just like you all are. But I have been reading and studying for years. While there is a lot of disagreement and debate, so far everything, every element of the prophecies, has been fulfilled literally, the way it was spelled out. I have to believe today is the day.”
“Ho’d on!” a woman shouted from the back. She was peering into a cell phone. “Look like somebody done took over the GC’s airwaves again.”
People crowded around.
“That Micah guy,” she said, “runnin’ things at Petra, is gonna speak about what comes next.”
Others pulled cell phones from their pockets and bags. “Should we listen, Brother Enoch? Will you be offended?”
“Hardly,” Enoch said, digging out his own. “What could be better than this? Dr. Rosenzweig is a scholar’s scholar. Let’s have church.”
The assembled put their tiny screens together on a concrete bench and turned them up so the combined volume reached everyone.
Mac saw the narrowing of Carpathia’s eyes and feared someone else was about to catch his rage. His attention had been drawn to the entrance of the room.
“Yes, what is it?” Carpathia said.
An underling said, “Begging the potentate’s pardon, but, Excellency, you asked to be informed.”
“What? What!”
“The zealots at Petra, the Judah-ites—”
“I know who is at Petra! What now?”
“They have pirated their way onto GC television again.”
Carpathia flushed and leaned over the table, resting on his palms. His jaw muscles tightened. “Turn it on,” he said through clenched teeth.
Leon nearly toppled trying to pull out a chair. He sat heavily and made a show of reaching far up under his robe and producing a remote-control laser, which he aimed at the wall behind Nicolae. A screen descended and the picture appeared: Chaim Rosenzweig seated on a simple set, deep in the confines of Petra. His ope
n Bible was before him, and he bore a pastoral smile. A timer showed that he would begin in less than a minute.
Carpathia looked over his shoulder at the screen, then turned back and slammed both fists on the table. “First,” he shouted, “confirm that Ipswich is dead! Then tell Tenzin I have changed my mind about Akbar! I want him dead too! Finally, get hold of Security at Al Hillah. Inform them of the demise of their chief and tell them the following order comes directly from me.
“Whatever it takes, I want Security to take over our broadcast center. I want the management personnel shot to death through both eyes, one administrator at a time, from the top down through the chain of command, one every sixty seconds until someone has wrested back control of the airwaves. Understood?”
No one moved or spoke.
“Understood?!”
“Yes, Excellency!” Leon said, reaching for his phone.
“I’m on it,” Viv Ivins said, phone already to her ear.
Carpathia whirled and faced the screen. “Does no one understand?” he railed. “Does no one recognize this man? This is the one who assassinated me! And while I raised myself from the dead and reign as your living lord, he remains a thorn in my side. Well, no longer! Not after today! A third of our entire army will overrun Petra tonight, and he shall be my personal target!”
With hydration and an IV started by Leah, Rayford at last began to feel he might make it. He still felt as if he had been run over by a tank, and there would be no walking or helping himself get off this godforsaken slope. But his mental faculties were returning, and he came to believe that Leah and Abdullah could somehow get him back to the compound.
“Two things, Miss Rose,” Abdullah said.
“Shoot.”
“According to Miss Palemoon, we have a problem with the conveyance.”
“What problem? There’s a stretcher in the Co-op. And a gurney too.”
“She checked with Mrs. Woo, and they both believe these will be impossible to transport to this location.”
Leah sat back, and Rayford saw her scan the hills above her leading to Petra. “She may have a point. What’s number two?”
“She says Micah is on GC television and that we might want to tune it in.”
“Do you have a TV, Mr. Smith?”
“Of course.”
“Well, the captain is as stable as I can make him, and we may be here a while. Let’s have a look.”
Abdullah pulled his cell phone from a leather bag attached to his bike.
“You want to see this, Captain?” Leah said.
Chang was glued to his monitor, but he asked Naomi to gather around him the rest of the techies on duty.
“Check this out, people,” he said. “Look at the counter in the upper left of the screen.”
Whistles and back slaps and exultations followed the speeding numbers, racing upward by the tens of thousands a second but having already surged far past the largest television audience in history. Nothing Carpathia ever broadcast had come close; in fact, the previous three records had all been held by Tsion Ben-Judah.
“Dearly beloved,” Chaim had begun, “I speak to you tonight probably for the last time before the Glorious Appearing of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ the Messiah. He could very well come during this message, and nothing would give me greater pleasure. When He comes there will be no more need for us to fight Antichrist and his False Prophet. The work will have been done for us by the King of kings.
“But as He did not return seven years to the minute from the signing of the covenant between Antichrist and Israel, many are troubled and confused. I wish to speak to that here, but mostly I need to be brief, for as you know, we commandeer these airwaves against the wishes of our archenemy, and you must believe that he is doing everything in his power right this very instant to bump us.
“More important than discussing the timing of Messiah’s return, however—which I can summarize in a sentence: I believe He will be here before midnight, Israel Time—is the spiritual state of my fellow Jews around the globe. If you have never listened before, lend me an ear this day. This is your last chance, your final warning, my ultimate plea with you to recognize and accept Jesus as the Messiah you have for so long sought.
“You have heard many times the proclamations of my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Tsion Ben-Judah, who outlined the numerous prophecies that soon came to pass. If these never persuaded you, hear me now and know that it is likely this very day that you will see the signs in the sky heralding the Glorious Appearing of Jesus.
“The Bible says in Matthew 24:29 and 30 that ‘immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
“‘Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.’
“This is the last day of the Tribulation that was prophesied thousands of years ago! Today is the seventh anniversary of the unholy and quickly broken covenant between Antichrist and Israel. What is next? The sun, wherever it is in the sky where you are, will cease to shine. If the moon is out where you are, it will go dark as well because it is merely a reflection of the sun. Do not fear. Do not be afraid. Do not panic. Take comfort in the truth of the Word of God and put your faith in Christ, the Messiah.
“What does it mean that the powers of the heavens will be shaken? I do not know, but beloved, I cannot wait to find out! The Bible says God ‘will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath: Blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.’
“I expect a show like I have never witnessed, but I will be safe as He has promised. Will you be safe? Are you ready? Are you prepared? Do not put it off another second.
“What is the sign of the Son of Man? Again, I do not know, but I know who the Son of Man is: Jesus, the Messiah. His sign could take any form. Might it be a mighty dove, as descended upon Him when John baptized Him? Might it be the form of a lion, as He has also been called the Lion of Judah? Might His sign be a lamb, as He is also the Lamb of God? The cross upon which He died? The open tomb, in which He conquered death? We do not know, but I will be watching. Won’t you?
“Who are these tribes of the earth who will mourn when they see Him coming? Those who are not ready. Those who have lingered in their rebellion, their disbelief, their sloth.
“Zechariah, the great Jewish prophet of old, foretold this thousands of years ago. He wrote, quoting Messiah: ‘I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn.’
“Imagine that, people! Historians tell us Zechariah wrote that prophecy well more than four hundred years before the birth of Christ, and yet he quotes the Lord referring to Himself as ‘Me whom they pierced.’
“Zechariah goes on: ‘In that day there shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem. . . . And the land shall mourn, every family by itself: the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves . . . all the families that remain, every family by itself, and their wives by themselves.
“‘In that day a fountain shall be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness. And it shall come to pass in all the land . . . that two-thirds in it shall be cut off and die, but one-third shall be left in it.
“‘I will bring the one-third through the fire, will refine them as silver is refined, and test them as gold is tested. They will call on My name, and I will answer them. I will say, “This is My people”; and each one will say, “The Lord is my God.”’
“Can there be any doubt, friends, that He is who the Bibl
e says He is? If you can still reject Him after seeing the sun snuffed out, the heavens shaken, and His sign appear, surely you are past hope, past saving. Do not wait. Be part of that one-third whom the Lord God has promised to bring through the fire.
“One of our first-century Jews, Peter, said, ‘It shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ I cannot choose more appropriate words than his when I speak to fellow Jews, saying, ‘Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know—Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it.
“‘For David says concerning Him: “I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken. Therefore my heart rejoiced, and my tongue was glad; moreover my flesh also will rest in hope. For You will not leave my soul in Hades, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. You have made known to me the ways of life; You will make me full of joy in Your presence.”
“‘Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according to the flesh, He would raise up the Christ to sit on his throne, he, foreseeing this, spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that His soul was not left in Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption. This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses. Therefore being exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He poured out this which you now see and hear.
“‘Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.’
“Beloved,” Chaim raced on, “the Bible tells us that when they heard this, they were ‘cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?”’