The Mark: The Beast Rules the World Read online

  As crowds shuffled through and then around what had been her sector, David squinted at the ground, the asphalt shimmering. Besides the ice-cream and candy wrappers and drink cups that lay motionless in the windless heat was what appeared to be residue of medical supplies. He was about to step from the cart for a closer look when an elderly couple climbed aboard and asked to be driven to the airport shuttle area.

  “This is not a people mover,” he said absently, having enough presence to remove the keys before leaving the vehicle.

  “How rude!” the woman said.

  “Come on,” the man said.

  David marched to sector 53 and knelt, the heat sapping his energy. In the shadows of hundreds walking by, he examined the plastic empties of bandages, gauze, ointment, even tubing. Someone had been ministered to here. It didn’t have to have been Annie. It could have been anyone. Still, he had to know. He made his way back to the cart, every seat but his now full.

  “Unless you need to go to Medical Services,” he said, punching the number into his phone, “you’re in the wrong cart.”

  In Chicago Rayford Steele found the Strong Building’s ninth floor enough of a bonanza that he was able to push from his mind misgivings about Albie. The truth about his dark, little Middle Eastern friend would be tested soon enough. Albie was to ferry a fighter jet from Palwaukee to Kankakee, where Rayford would later pick him up in a Global Community helicopter.

  Besides discovering a room full of the latest desktop and minicomputers—still in their original packaging—Rayford found a small private sleeping room adjacent to a massive executive office. It was outfitted like a luxurious hotel room, and he rushed from floor to floor to find the same next to at least four offices on every level.

  “We have more amenities than we ever dreamed,” he told the exhausted Tribulation Force. “Until we can blacken the windows, we’ll have to get some of the beds into the corridors near the elevators where they can’t be seen from the outside.”

  “I thought no one ever came near here,” Chloe said, Kenny sleeping in her lap and Buck dozing with his head on her shoulder.

  “Never know what satellite imaging shows,” Rayford said. “We could be sleeping soundly while GC Security and Intelligence forces snap our pictures from the stratosphere.”

  “Let me get these two to bed somewhere,” she said, “before I collapse.”

  “I’ve moved furniture in my day,” Leah said, slowly rising. “Where are these beds and where do we put them?”

  “I wish I could help,” Chaim said through clenched teeth, his jaw still wired shut.

  Rayford stopped him with a gesture. “If you’re staying with us, sir, you answer to me. We need you and Buck as healthy as you can be.”

  “And I need you alert for study,” Tsion said. “You made me cram for enough exams. Now you’re in for the crash course of your life.”

  Rayford, Chloe, Leah, and Tsion spent half an hour moving beds up the elevator to makeshift quarters in an inner corridor on the twenty-fifth floor. By the time Rayford gingerly boarded the chopper balanced precariously on what served as the new roof of the tower, everyone was asleep save Tsion. The rabbi seemed to gain a second wind, and Rayford wasn’t sure why.

  Rayford left the instrument panel lights on and, of course, the outside lights off. He fired up the rotors but waited to lift off until his eyes had adjusted to the darkness. The copter had twenty feet of clearance on each side. Little was trickier—especially to a fixed-wing expert like Rayford—than the shifting currents inside what amounted to a cavernous smokestack. Rayford had seen choppers crash in wide-open spaces after merely hovering too long in one place. Mac McCullum had tried to explain the physics of it, but Rayford had not listened closely enough to grasp it. Something about the rotors sucking up air from beneath the craft, leaving it no buoyancy. By the time the pilot realized he was dropping through dead air of his own making, he had destroyed the equipment and often killed all on board.

  Rayford needed sleep as much as any of his charges, but he had to go get Albie. There was more to that too, of course. He could have called his friend and told him to lie low till the following evening. But Albie was new to the country and would have to fend for himself outside or bluff his way into a hotel. With Carpathia resurrected and the GC naturally on heightened alert, who knew how long he could pull off impersonating a GC officer?

  Anyway, Rayford had to know whether Albie was “with him or agin him,” as his father used to say. He had been thrilled to see the mark of the believer on Albie’s forehead, but much of what the man had done in the predawn hours confused Rayford and made him wonder. A wily, streetwise man like Albie—one who had provided so much at high risk to himself—would be the worst kind of opponent. Rayford worried that he had unwittingly led the Tribulation Force into the lair of the enemy.

  As the chopper rumbled through the shaft at the top of the tower, Rayford held his breath. He had carefully set the craft as close to the middle of the space as he could, allowing him to use one corner for his guide as he rose. If he kept the whirring blades equidistant from the walls in the one corner, he should be centered until free of the building.

  How vulnerable and conspicuous could a man feel? He imagined David Hassid having miscalculated, trusting old information, not realizing that the GC itself knew Chicago was safe—not off-limits due to radiation. Rayford himself had overheard Carpathia say he had not used radiation on the city, at least initially. He wondered if the GC had planted such information just to lure in the insurgents and have them where they wanted them—in one place for easy dispatch.

  With his helicopter free of the tower, Rayford still dared not engage the lights. He would stay low, hopefully beneath radar. He wanted to be invisible to satellite surveillance photography as well, but heat sensing had been so refined that the dark whirlybird would glow orange on a monitor.

  A chill ran up his back as he let his imagination run. Was he being followed by a half dozen craft just like his own? He wouldn’t hear or see them. They could have waited nearby, even on the ground. How would he know?

  Since when did he manufacture trouble? There was enough real danger without concocting more.

  Rayford set the instrument panel lights at their lowest level and quickly saw he was off course. It was an easy fix, but so much for trusting his brain, even in a ship like this. Mac had once told him that piloting a helicopter was to flying a 747 as riding a bike was to driving a sport utility vehicle. From that Rayford assumed that he would do more work by the seat of his pants than by marrying himself to the instrument panel. But neither had he planned on flying blind over a deserted megalopolis in wee-hour blackness. He had to get to Kankakee, pick up Albie, and get back to the tower before sunup. He had not a minute to spare. The last thing he wanted was to be seen over a restricted area in broad daylight. Detected in the dead of night was one thing. He would take his chances, trust his instincts. But there would be no hiding under the sun, and he would die before he would lead anyone to the new safe house.

  In New Babylon frustrated supplicants had formed a new line, several thousand long, outside the Global Community Palace. GC guards traversed the length of it, telling people that the resurrected potentate would have to leave the courtyard when he had finished greeting those who happened to be in the right place at the right time.

  David detoured from his route to Medical Services to hear the response of the crowd. They did not move, did not disperse. The guards, their bullhorned messages ignored, finally stopped to listen. David, looking puzzled, pulled up behind one of the jeeps, and a guard shrugged as if as dumbfounded as Director Hassid. The guard with the loudspeaker said, “Suit yourselves, but this is an exercise in futility.”

  “We have another idea!” shouted a man with a Hispanic accent.

  “I’m listening,” the guard said, as the crowd near him quieted.

  “We will worship the statue!” he said, and hundreds in line cheered.

  “What did he say? What did he
say?” The question raced down the line in both directions.

  “Did not Supreme Commander Fortunato say we should do that?” the man said.

  “Where are you from, my friend?” the guard asked, admiration in his voice.

  “Méjico!” the man shouted in his native tongue, and many with him exulted.

  “You have the heart of the toreador!” the guard said. “Let me check on it!”

  The news spread as the guard settled in his seat and talked into his phone. Suddenly he stood and gave the man a thumbs-up. “You have been cleared to worship the image of His Excellency, the risen potentate!”

  The crowd cheered.

  “In fact, your leaders consider it a capital idea!”

  The crowd sang and chanted, edging closer and closer to the courtyard.

  “Please maintain order!” the guard urged. “It will be more than an hour before you will be allowed in. But you will get your wish!”

  David shook his head as he executed a huge U-turn and headed to the courtyard. People along the way called out to him. “Is it true? May we at least worship the statue?”

  David ignored most of them, but when clusters moved in front of his speeding cart, he was forced to brake before slipping around them. Occasionally he nodded, to their delight. They ran to get in a line that already stretched more than a quarter mile. Would this day ever end?

  CHAPTER 2

  Rayford mentally kicked himself. He had vastly underestimated the time and his ability to pick up Albie, settle on the disposition of both the fighter jet and the Gulfstream, and get back to the new safe house before sunrise. The sun was already toying with the horizon. He patted his pants pocket for his phone. He felt for it in his flight bag, his jacket, on the floor.

  He wanted to swear, but since coming to his senses just days before, Rayford acknowledged that he needed a return to discipline. He had learned from an old friend in college something he had then rejected as too esoteric and way too touchy-feely. His broad-minded friend had called it his “opposite trigger” mode, and while in it, he forced himself to respond in ways diametrically opposed to how he felt. If he wanted to shout, he whispered. If he wanted to smack someone, he gently caressed his or her shoulder.

  Rayford hadn’t thought about that old friend or his crazy idea until the lonely, emotional flight from the Middle East to Greece and then to the United North American States. And now he decided to try it. He wanted to swear at himself for being shortsighted and for losing his phone. Instead, he surveyed his mind for an opposite response. One opposite of swearing was blessing, but whom would he bless? Another was praying.

  “Lord,” he began, “once again I need some help. I’m mad at myself and have few options. I’m exhausted, but I need to know what to do.”

  Almost instantly Rayford remembered that Albie had his phone. Albie had a phone of his own, too, but in the bustle and grabbing of various items, Rayford had entrusted his to his friend. Sometime soon he would have to get someone to rig a radio base in the safe house with a secure channel to the chopper so he could communicate directly. Meanwhile, he couldn’t tell the rest of the Tribulation Force where he was or that he would not be returning until at least late that same evening.

  Neither could he determine whether Albie was all right. He would have to simply land, using his alias with the tower, and hope Albie was waiting for him.

  David left messages on Annie’s phone and tried every other source he could think of that might know her whereabouts. Medical Services was too busy to look her up on their computers. “She wouldn’t be in the system yet,” he was told, “even if she were here.”

  “You’re not swiping bar codes on the badges of employees as they are admitted?”

  “They’re not actually being admitted, Director. Everybody goes to triage, the living are treated, and the dead pronounced. Cataloging them is low on the priority list, but we’ll eventually get everyone logged in.”

  “How will I know if she’s there?”

  “You may come look, but don’t interfere and keep out of the way.”

  “Where’s triage?”

  “As far east as you can go from our main tent. We try to start ’em in the shade of three tents, but we’re out of space and they’re in and out of there as fast as we can move ’em.”

  “Mostly sunstroke?” David said.

  “Mostly lightning, Director.”

  “Tower to GC chopper! Do you copy?”

  “This is GC chopper, Kankakee,” Rayford said, trying to cover that he was rattled. “My apologies. Asleep at the stick here.”

  “Not literally, I hope.”

  “No, sir.”

  “State your business.”

  “Uh, yeah, civilian under the authority of Deputy Commander Marcus Elbaz.”

  “Mr. Berry?”

  “Roger.”

  “Deputy Commander Elbaz asks that we set your mind at ease about your phone.”

  “Roger that!”

  “Cleared for landing to the south where he will meet you in Hangar 2. You can appreciate we’re shorthanded here. You can handle your own securing and refueling.”

  Ten minutes later Rayford asked Albie how long he thought he could keep up the ruse on the GC. “As long as your comrade Hassid is in the saddle at the palace. He’s a remarkable young man, Rayford. I confess I had to hold my breath more than once here. They were tough, short of personnel as they are. I had to go through two checkpoints.”

  Rayford squinted. “They let me in without a second glance, and I hadn’t even contacted the tower.”

  “That’s because you’re with me and a civilian.”

  “You convinced ’em, eh?”

  “Totally. But I have to hand it to your friend. Not only does he have me on the international GC database with name, rank, and serial number, but he also has me assigned to this part of the United North American States. I’m here because I’m supposed to be here. I check out better than most of the legitimate GC personnel.”

  “David’s good,” Rayford said.

  “The best. I blustered and acted impatient and pretended they would get in trouble if they detained me too long. But they were unmoved—until the second checkpoint ran me through the computer and reached David’s database. Someday he’ll have to tell me how he does that. He entered all of my information, and when my papers matched with what they saw on the screen, I was gold. Then I began barking orders, telling them to pave the way for you, that we had urgent business and must be on our way.”

  Rayford told Albie it would be impossible to return to the safe house until dark and that he might as well carry him back to Palwaukee so he could move the Gulfstream to Kankakee.

  “Would you rather have some fun?” Albie said. “You want to see if GC has torched your old safe house yet and do it for them if not?”

  “Not a bad idea,” Rayford said. “If they just burned it, fine, but if they start combing it for evidence, I worry what we might have left.”

  “They don’t have the personnel for that,” Albie said, moving toward the helicopter. “Fueled up?”

  Rayford nodded.

  “The fighter is too, ready whenever we need it.” Albie slung his bag over his shoulder, dug in it for Rayford’s phone, and tossed it to him.

  “Three unanswered calls,” Rayford muttered as they boarded the chopper. “Hope everything’s all right in Chicago. When did the calls come?”

  “All three about half an hour ago, one right after the other. None showed phone numbers, so I didn’t think I should answer for you.”

  They were strapped in now, but Rayford said, “I’d better check with the safe house.”

  Tsion answered groggily.

  “I’m sorry to wake you, Doctor,” Rayford began.

  “Oh, Captain Steele, it’s no trouble. I only just fell asleep. Chloe’s phone, it was ringing and ringing, and she was sound asleep. No one roused; they are so exhausted. I was not able to get to it in time, but when it rang again, this time I hurried and c
arried it to a quiet place. Rayford, it was Miss Durham!”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, and she sounded desperate. I pleaded with her to tell me where she was and reminded her that we all love her and care about her and are praying for her, but she wanted only to talk to you. She said she had tried your phone, and I told her I would try too. I tried twice to no avail. Anyway, you have her number.”

  “I’ll call her.”

  “And you’ll let me know.”

  “Tsion, get some rest. You have so much to do, setting up your computer area, teaching Chaim—”

  “Oh, Rayford, I am so excited about that that I can barely contain myself. And I have so much to communicate to my audience on the computer. But you must call Miss Durham, and yes, you’re right. Unless there is a compelling reason why we should know, you can tell us when you return. Frankly, I expected you by now.”

  “I miscalculated, Tsion. I can’t return until the sky is black. But I am available by phone now.”

  “And you have connected with your Middle Eastern friend.”

  “I have.”

  “And is he all right, Rayford? Forgive me, but he seemed preoccupied.”

  “Everything’s fine here, Doctor.”

  “He is a new believer too, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he will be staying with us?”

  “That’s likely.”

  “Then I will look forward to training him as well.”

  David was aghast at Medical Services. He had visited their indoor facility many times, which, despite their thinning ranks, was pristine and shipshape. What had begun as the main first-aid station, which serviced dozens of others throughout the area during the Carpathia wake, now looked like a mobile army surgical hospital.

  The rest of the first-aid stations were being dismantled and leftover injured taken either to the courtyard triage center or into the indoor facility.

  Row upon row of makeshift cots snaked across the courtyard. “Why aren’t you moving these people inside?” David said, tugging at his stiff collar.