Messenger's Dawn

by Lior Akerman

  Silence.

  “Carl, Stanhoff, please contact us and report your status, now.” Linda now raised her voice, but this was not enough to end the silence on the other side of the line.

  Linda turned around to her commander and said:

  “Sergeant Manolo, I have lost contact with unit 358. They are not responding to my calls. An hour- and-a half has passed since they received the call and arrived at the Worth Street Station.”

  The sergeant listened to her and asked:

  “What patrols do we have in the area?”

  Linda looked through the list on her table and said:

  “Unit 405, sir. Sergeants Montague and Santum Pardash. They are heading south on West Street in Tribeca.”

  Manolo instructed her to contact 405 and send them immediately to Worth Street to see what happened to Carl and Stanhoff. Ten minutes later they were there, finding the patrol vehicle locked on the sidewalk.

  “This is 405. The time is 15:55 and we are on site. We found the vehicle but Carl and Stanhoff are not here,” Montague reported.

  The next call Linda received was even more surprising.

  “This is 358, everything is alright here. There was no reception, we are on our way back.”

  Manolo and Linda looked at each other surprised. Manolo took the radio and said:

  “405, thank you for responding so quickly. Wait where you are until 358 leaves and then you are relieved.”

  “This is 405. Copy that.”

  He looked at his partner and said with a smile:

  “We got lucky. Now we don’t have to go looking for them in the cold and rain.”

  They turned the heat in the vehicle up, as well as the music on the radio. All they had to do was wait for Carl and Stanhoff to come out of the old station but this didn’t happen. At 16:20, they were still in the vehicle and no one had come out. Montague looked at his partner, Pardash, and said:

  “I am going in to see what is keeping them. Wait for me here.”

  That was the last time anyone saw Montague. Ten minutes later, Pardash called his partner on the radio.

  “Montague, do you read me?”

  Silence.

  “This is 405, I am going to see what is keeping the guys inside. I will be right back.” Pardash said on the radio.

  He got out of the vehicle, locked it and entered the station.

  By 16:30 Linda was impatient, also since Manolo was standing over her.

  “405, please report your status.”

  Silence.

  Fifteen minutes later, two calls were made from the call center. The first was Sergeant Manolo reporting to the station commander Mason Perry that the officers had disappeared and lost contact. The second was from Linda. She was carrying out the orders she was given earlier that evening and reported the irregular incident to Captain Jacobs.

  “You fools! This incident has been developing irregularly since 14:00. Only now you are reporting it?”

  This was almost the exact same thing that Mason said to Manolo. The next call was from Jacobs to Mason.

  “Mason,” Jacobs said. “Don’t do anything. I will be right there. Close off the area with a four-block radius. Do it quietly. I am coming, I will update you on the ground.”

  Jacobs got up, quickly put his coat on, woke up Alice, who was sleeping on the couch, and called Carter and Jones to join him. They drove in separate vehicles. Driving through the empty streets was quick and 15 minutes later they were already with Mason Perry on the corner of Center and Leonard Streets They decided to set up a police field command center in the nearby park. Mason was there when they arrived while four officers were putting it together. They shook hands and Perry seemed to be pleased with himself.

  “The area has been closed off, from Church Street in the west to Kimlau Square in the east and between Chambers in the south and Leonard in the north. What is next?”

  Jacobs answered in concern:

  “Mason, I am acting based on the gut feeling of an experienced cop. We have apparently identified suspicious activity at the abandoned train station at Worth Street. The fact that the two units sent to check have disappeared only increases my suspicions.”

  By now, Perry was very intrigued. Jacobs added:

  “I have reason to believe that something supernatural is happening there. If I am not mistaken, the “Devils in Black” may be there, planning something.”

  “What exactly are we supposed to do about this?” Perry asked.

  Everyone looked at Jacobs who cleared his throat and said:

  “I am not sure. But if what I suspect is true, we have cause for optimism. In the meantime, make sure the entire area is closed off. No one goes in or out.”

  He went over to Alice who was standing on the side and whispered in her ear.

  45.

  Washington, November 1st, 14:00

  The war room in the basement, 15 floors underground in the White House, was noisy and full of activity. Tens of officials were running from place to place, answering phones, pulling encrypted information pages from printers. In the isolated glass room in the corner, VP Chambers and his staff were discussing the situation. From there they were able to speak to President Lindon, who was on Air Force One at the time, 11,000 feet in the air, somewhere over the north pole. The room was connected to the Kremlin in Moscow, the Elise Palace in Paris, Downing Street in London and the Bundestag situation room, outside Bonn, 50 meters underground. All armies were on high alert, ready for any developments and the civilian emergency systems were also ready to deal with all scenarios. All leave was canceled in the police and military forces around the world, even though everyone knew that all these measures would not actually help when the “Devils in Black” demonstrated their power.

  Behind closed doors, the world leaders had begun discussing the terms of surrender and the right way to minimize the defeat and failure. In all of the confidential talks between the world leaders, they all referred to two options, Plan A and Plan B. Plan A was discussed seriously at first and preparations were made all over the world. Armies got organized, headquarters established, means of collaboration between countries determined and shelters prepared. However, as the discussions continued, everyone realized that the only realistic plan was Plan B. They could not say so publicly but they knew it was the only plan that may save the world from annihilation. This plan was shorter and simpler than Plan A but its consequences were much worse.

  Plan B included two thin black folders, carrying the logo of the White House. In it were a number of documents prepared in advance. The first folder contained a two page document of the surrender announcement of all world power leaders, with their signatures at the bottom of it. The second folder contained a number of documents that were identical but with different symbols. Each document contained the details of how each country would disarm itself, as part of the process of surrendering to the “Devils in Black.” The first document contained the symbol of the U.S.A. The next documents had the symbols of Russia, Germany, France, Britain, China, Japan and Canada. The documents were both in English and the country’s own language. In the last 48 hours, the workers of the State Department were busy working on these documents, under complete secrecy.

  The plan the leaders agreed to was to broadcast the surrender document at 20:00 exactly, followed by an address by President Lindon on behalf of all the leaders. He planned to explain the cause for their surrender, to protect humanity and act in its best interest. Lindon’s speech was recorded in advance in his private room on Air Force One and was sent to the White House as an encrypted file. It was edited and prepared and was now ready to be broadcasted. The different media channels were notified by the White House spokesman to stop their broadcasts at 20:00.

  46.

  New York, Midtown, November 1st, 17:30

  In the last few hours, he had been at the su
bway station of the green line on East 68th Street and Lexington, after he managed to lose the police that had been following him for a few days. In the last few nights, he enjoyed having them run on the park paths at strange hours but he decided he had enough of them and needed privacy. On one of the nights, when he felt like having some fun, he went to the park and walked through his favorite area, on the eastern side, near 5th Avenue. When he reached the statue positioned there, he sat in front of it for four hours, getting his surveillance to freeze and get wet in the rain. He smiled to himself, standing in front of the statue of Alice in Wonderland, seeing the irony in spending the night with the statue, instead with Alice herself.

  It was evening by now and the greyness was replaced with the black sky. The streets were soaking wet as a result of the endless downpour that sounded to him like thousands of tiny pieces of glass falling from the sky. Sitting alone in the isolated and dark railroad track tunnel heading south, he listened to the words of his favorite sound, playing in his earphones on the MP4 device he took from Alice’s house. It was Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence’ from their live concert at Madison Square Garden in 2003.

  Hello, darkness, my old friend

  I’ve come to talk with you again

  Because a vision softly creeping

  Left its seeds while I was sleeping

  And the vision that was planted in my brain

  Still remains

  Within the sound of silence…

  And in the naked light I saw

  People talking without speaking

  People hearing without listening

  People writing songs that voices never share

  No one dared

  Disturb the sound of silence

  “Fools,” said I, “You do not know

  Silence like a cancer grows…

  And the people bowed and prayed

  To the neon god they made

  And the sign flashed out its warning…

  And the sign said, “The words of the prophets

  Are written on the subway walls

  And tenement halls

  And whispered in the sounds of silence.”

  The words of this song described everything he and the entire world had been through these past months, especially in the last few days. Walking through the empty streets alone, the silence, so many people believing in false promises on signs and walls, human indifference that let evil spread in the world. The false and true prophecies and the prayers to the God people had created that did not help them when in need. Also, maybe more than anything else, humankind’s lack of faith, its power and ability to fight for its liberty and freedom of thought, to overcome evil.

  Sitting there alone, at that spot, listening to that song, he suddenly understood his mission. Suddenly, it all came together. The messages he received from the rabbi and the priest, the messages he received in Israel and New York, the many quotations, the prophecy. It all came together. The long and special journey he had been on in the last few months was intended to prepare him for his main task - helping humanity overcome human nature, evil, coercion, and killing in the name of religions and ideologies. He was to defend humanity from itself. This was a journey to unite nations and religions with the same fate. This was a journey everyone was a part of. This was a change that the people themselves were to undergo, led by the national and religious leaders. But he was the first who acknowledged this message and he transferred to the world. He was just the messenger.

  He who was a descendant of King David and the Levites, serving in the Temple thousands of years ago, from the family from which Jesus was born two thousand years ago, who knew religion but lived far from it, his goodness, weakness and power of spirit, led to him being chosen as the messenger. But at that moment, lost in thought, he knew that deep down he was never chosen for this mission. He brought it on himself. He accepted the mission and now it was time to complete it. He owed that to the world, its leaders and the billions of people waiting for him, believing in him and needing him more than anything. Most of all, he owed it to himself.

  He now knew that he had the power to complete the mission.

  When he stood up, coming out of the hole he had been sitting in, he took off his earphones and looked south towards the tracks. He knew where he was heading.

  47.

  New York, Downtown, November 1st, 18:00

  It was no longer possible to stop what they had started.

  That night, they were going to complete what they had begun three months earlier. To them this was a mission that began decades before. The quiet and distance from the crowds helped them properly prepare, at least that is what they believed. They had worked hard in the last few months to be ready on time for executing their plan. While they kept the world busy with the continuous disasters and threats, they took advantage of the fact that the attention was elsewhere in order to lay their foundation in place.

  But there was something suspicious happening. They looked at each other, trying to listen carefully to the sounds outside. It was quiet, there was no noise outside and the unusual quiet seemed strange to them. There no longer were sounds of the streets above. This seemed very strange and Charnbog promised to go up and check but they first had to complete their task and they only had a few minutes to do so. They were busy connecting the last electrical wires coming from all the subway tunnels, connected to a black metal device placed between them. In the last few months, they had booby trapped all the subway tunnels and sewage pipes beneath the city with powerful explosives. Right beneath them, below the metal device, they dug a deep pit in the ground, lowering their judgment day weapon into it. They had six nuclear warheads taken from the Russian and Korean rockets launched at the U.S., shot down before striking, just as they had planned. Now they were buried beneath the old train station at Worth Street, 100 meters underground, deep enough to destroy the entire City of New York and cause a huge earthquake across the entire East Coast.

  The police were deployed outside the old station, blocking off all the streets. Five teams of the anti-terror unit arrived in black vans and the masked force spread out around the entrance. Jacobs found the commander of this force and asked to speak to him. He briefed him shortly about the target and the task and made it clear to Captain Samuel Murphy that he was extremely dangerous. The darkness and rain on the cold November night did not make it any easier.

  “There are two people, sir,” Murphy said with confidence. “My men have dealt with more complicated situations. We know how to get the job done.”

  He went back to the unit at the corner of Leonard and Lafayette and gathered them for a briefing. Two minutes later, Jacobs noticed two of them moving quietly and slowly to the station entrance.

  Sergeant Eddie McMillan and Sergeant Jack Ryan were experienced veteran soldiers, specializing in silent observation. A minute later, they disappeared in the old station in the darkness. The helmet cameras they had on sent the live video to the command center in a truck parked at the headquarters in the Collect Pond Park. Jacobs, Murphy and Mason Perry watched the screen with great suspense, as McMillan and Ryan slowly made their way forward in the corridors of the old station. It was completely dark around them and it was the SLS infrared vision glasses that enabled them to see in the dark. Ryan walked behind McMillan, also equipped with thermal vision enabling him to see any movement of a body of heat, even in the dark. The descent down the stairs was slow and to the officers at the command center it felt like an eternity. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they stopped and looked around. Their advanced ACR Bushmaster guns were facing forward, ready to fire. The tunnel was pitch black but their special night vision identified a faint light coming from a crack beneath the tracks, to the right of where they stood. McMillan signaled to Ryan to move forward with him. They walked across the dark abandoned platform to the spot where the light was coming from. He pointe
d down and Ryan confirmed he understood.

  When McMillan jumped carefully onto the tracks, he bent down and froze. Directly beneath him, near his left foot, was a burnt police badge with the name Stanhoff on it. He picked it up and showed it to Ryan.

  “Now I am very concerned,” Mason said.

  “We are going in,” McMillan whispered on the radio.

  “Cover me from behind.”

  He looked to his right, towards the opening that led down beneath the tracks. The light coming from it just seconds before had disappeared. It was dark again and silent. Jacobs had ordered the trains to stop running. Ryan also jumped quietly down to the tracks and they moved slowly over to the opening in the wall opposite them. The screens in the command center were not showing anything. They couldn’t see anything, even with the sophisticated means of vision they had. It was dark. They moved a few steps forward into the darkness and stopped. They both heard the clicking sound from right behind them. They swung around.

  The sight that Jacobs, Murphy and Perry saw on the screen was inconceivable. For a second they saw two small lights that looked like eyes and at once the screen was lit with a blinding light.

  They heard Ryan say:

  “Oh my God, what is that?”

  Then they heard terrible cries of pain and suffering and automatic gunfire from their weapons. There were two bursts of fire before everything went silent and the picture on the screen disappeared. It was dark again in the tunnel and on the screens in the command center. The three officers looked at each other helpless and shocked.

  48.

  New York, Downtown, November 1st, 19:45

  Only 15 minutes remained to the end of the ultimatum and the releasing of the statement of surrender of the superpowers. Samael and Charnbog timed the activation of their strike for 20:05. On one hand, they knew they had been exposed and did not have much time left. On the other hand, they had to wait for the time they set. Samael looked over at Charnbog and whispered to him: