The Mark: The Beast Rules the World Read online

  Chaim held up a hand. Buck could barely make out the labored, muffled question. “And what are we to do? We are no match for him.”

  “You will see, my friend,” Tsion said. “You will learn today not only the history of the Jews, but their future as well. God will protect his people, now and forevermore.”

  “I like being a believer already,” Chaim managed.

  “Buck,” Chloe said, stepping close to embrace him, “we have to plan Zeke’s rescue.”

  “Just what I need today, another mission.”

  “You slept, didn’t you?”

  “Like a dead man.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Well . . .”

  “It’s you or me, pal,” Chloe said. “If you need another day of recup—”

  “I’ll be ready,” Buck said.

  “I can help,” Leah said. “I’m fit.”

  “Maybe the two of you, then,” Chloe said. “I’ve got to get news to the co-op, keep everybody working together.”

  “We’re going to need a pilot,” Buck said. “Put the GC chopper down right in the middle of their stakeout, chide ’em for missing a suspect, and we arrest Zeke Jr. and bring him here. What? What’s with all the looks?”

  “We don’t have a chopper today or tonight, hon,” Chloe said. “Probably not until tomorrow night, and we don’t dare risk making Zeke wait that long.”

  “OK, so where’s the helicopter and your dad? And Albie?”

  CHAPTER 4

  David hurried to his office and phoned Annie. No answer. Then he called the motor pool. The man who had originally brought him his cart was off duty, but the one he reached told him, “No, sir, no phone. Nothing was left in there. We found the cart but not you, and my boss was pretty mad until he traced you to Medical Services. You OK?”

  “Fine.”

  “Need the cart?”

  “No.”

  “Anything I can do fo—”

  But David had hung up. He flipped open his computer and saw urgent messages flashing from the code words and numbers he knew belonged to his comrades in the Tribulation Force. He would get to those when he could, but for now, before the infernal meeting, he had to get his phone back and find out where Annie was.

  His watch read 2135. He searched the GC database for Personnel, Medical, Nursing, Female, under P. There it was: “Palemoon, Hannah L., room and extension 4223.” A groggy hello greeted the fifth ring.

  “Nurse Palemoon?”

  “Yeah, who’s this?”

  “I am so sorry to be calling so late and sorry to wake you, but—”

  “Hassid?”

  “Yes, forgive me, but—”

  “I have your phone.”

  “Oh, thank G—goodness! Is it on?”

  “No, sir, I turned it off. Now are you coming to get it so I can get back to sleep?”

  “Could I? If you don’t mind terribly, I—”

  “I gotta show you something anyway.”

  What in the world? Was he being set up? Why would she be so willing to have him come and get it? And why did she take it in the first place? To be safe, he jumped back on the computer and fired up the bugging device that would record their conversation in the corridor outside her room.

  As he backed out of that program he saw the blinking signals for his urgent messages again. Looked like Rayford and Albie had been desperately trying to reach him. He didn’t have time to deal with them, but what if they had heard from Annie? He had to peek.

  The requests stunned him. He was way late for helping Albie and Rayford in Colorado, but his fingers flew over the keyboard anyway. His head ached, his wound oozed, and he blinked furiously. He entered the numbers to override the Peacekeeping security codes. Under his phony name as a high-level GC unit commander in New Babylon, he assigned Marcus Elbaz to Carpathia Memorial Airstrip in Colorado Springs. He also authorized him to temporarily appropriate a vehicle with which to take custody of an escapee from the Belgium Facility for Female Rehabilitation, currently incarcerated at a bunker on the north end of Pueblo. A few more keystrokes derived the exact coordinates of that facility and the name of the deputy director in charge—Pinkerton Stephens. Fortunately, Stephens was lower ranked than Deputy Commander Elbaz.

  David would work on name, rank, and serial number for Rayford later, hoping the two of them could bluff their way past the GC in the meantime. It was 2150, Hannah Palemoon was waiting, and he couldn’t be late for the big meeting. Healthy and in shape it would have been a challenge to get to her room, retrieve his phone, and get to Carpathia’s office in time, but wounded as he was, he couldn’t imagine it.

  He could phone Fortunato at the last minute and explain he would be a few minutes late, coming from his hospital bed. But neither did he want to miss any of that meeting. As he locked his door and strode quickly toward the elevator, he wobbled and had to grab the wall. Catch your breath, he told himself. Late is better than not there at all.

  “Give me my razor,” Albie said. “It’s going to be hard to pull this off if I’m out of regulation.”

  “You’ll be on the ground in less than a minute,” Rayford said.

  “I have a copilot, do I not?”

  Rayford pulled Albie’s electric razor from his bag and took over the landing as Albie shaved and tightened his tie. When ground control confirmed the landing, Albie responded, then whipped off the headphones and put on his uniform cap. When they disembarked, Rayford was struck again how the diminutive Middle Easterner seemed taller, more commanding.

  “I can point you to the refueling area so you can tank up before takeoff, Commander Elbaz.”

  “You can’t do it for me while I’m on assignment?”

  “Sorry, sir, we’re shorthan—”

  “I know. Carry on.”

  Rayford stayed a step behind Albie as they made their way to the offices, hoping that once David got him enlisted as a GC Peacekeeper, he would give him an even higher rank. How could he supervise a man who outranked him in disguise?

  The officer at the desk saluted and said, “I told my chief you weren’t in the computer, so you’re on your own for ground transportation. If you’ll give me your fueling order number, however, I can clear you for that when—”

  “Excuse me?” Albie said.

  “You’ll have to refuel yourself, because—”

  “I know all that. I need a vehicle for an important assignment, and I need it now. You expect me to rent a car?”

  “Sir, I’m just telling you what my chief said. I—”

  “Get him out here.”

  “He’s a her, sir.”

  “I don’t care if he’s a gorilla. Get him, or her, out here.”

  The airstrip chief appeared before the deskman buzzed her. She saluted but did not smile. “Judy Hamilton at your service, Commander.”

  “Not enough at my service, I’m afraid.”

  “I can do only what I can do, sir, but I’m open to suggestions.”

  “Do you have a vehicle?”

  “None available, sir.”

  “I need it for half a day, tops.”

  “None, sir.”

  “You personally?”

  “Me, sir?”

  Albie sighed loudly through his nose. “You understand English, Hamilton? Do-you-personally-have-a-vehicle?”

  “I have not been issued GC wheels, sir.”

  “I didn’t ask you that. How do you get to work?”

  “I drive.”

  “Then you must have a vehicle.”

  “My own, yes, sir.”

  “That would be what personal means, Ju-dy. I will be borrowing your personal vehicle this afternoon, and the Global Community will be indebted to you. In fact, we will be indebted at the rate of one Nick per mile.”

  She raised a brow. “The manual says half that, sir.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Albie said. “I’ll authorize it due to your cooperation.”

  “No demerits for stupidity, sir?”

  “On
ly for insubordination, Hamilton, which is one way I define sarcasm.”

  “So you’ll pay me a Nick a mile for the use of my car.”

  “You catch on quickly.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No, you’ll not be using my car.”

  “I beg your pardon, Hamilton?”

  “I have a meeting in Monument in two hours, and C-25 has been open only a week, and not all lanes. I need to leave now.”

  “And you believe your meeting takes precedence over that of a deputy commander?”

  “It does today, sir, because of your attitude.”

  “You are denying me the use of your car?”

  “You catch on quickly.”

  Albie squinted at her, reddening. “You’re going on report, Hamilton. You will be disciplined.”

  “But surely not this afternoon. And you will be disciplined as well.”

  “I?” Albie said.

  “How long has it been since the resurrection of the potentate, yet you greeted neither my deskman nor me with the new phrase.”

  “I have been busy and up for hours.”

  “You don’t know that we greet each other with ‘He is risen,’ to be responded to by ‘He is risen indeed’?”

  “Of course, but—ma’am, I also need to know the exact location of the facility on the north end of Pueblo where—”

  “You don’t have full orders, sir?”

  “Unfortunately not.”

  “Corporal, check the computer again. Let me see what we do have on Deputy Commander Elbaz and whether we can add bluster and bullying to his profile.”

  “Hamilton, I—”

  She silenced him with a hand.

  “Hey,” the deskman said, “this wasn’t here before. Straight from the brass in New Babylon. Look.”

  Hamilton peered and blanched at the screen. Rayford let out a breath. The woman cleared her throat. “It appears everything is in order, Commander. I, uh, would like to propose a truce.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You’re cleared for a vehicle too, and we will find you one, though I will be happy to use the jeep if you still care to use my car.”

  “You would let me?”

  “I will not only let you use the car, but I will also agree not to report your breach of protocol if you will keep between us your opinion of my insubordination.”

  Buck and Chloe left the baby in Leah’s care while Tsion and Chaim studied. The couple made their way to the basement of the tower, where Buck had parked the Land Rover among many other vehicles.

  “We can be grateful this place had the ritzy clientele it did,” Chloe said. “Look at these rigs.”

  Buck had to smile at the difference between them and the filthy, banged-up Rover, which wasn’t so old. He smacked a palm atop it, and it echoed throughout the parking garage. “Ol’ Bessie saw us through a lot, didn’t she?”

  Chloe shook her head. “She? You men and your penchant for attributing female characteristics to your cars.”

  Buck leaned back against a pillar and beckoned Chloe to him. He enveloped her. “Think about it,” he said. “I couldn’t pay the car, or women, a higher compliment.”

  “Keep digging. You’ll need a backhoe in a minute.”

  “Not if you think about it.”

  She leaned back and cocked her head, pointing to her temple. “Hmm, let’s see if ol’ Charley and I can figger this out. Callin’ mah brain by a man’s name is the biggest compliment I can pay it and men.”

  “C’mon,” Buck said. “Think what that car’s been through with us. It got us through traffic when the war broke out. Kept you alive when you sailed it into a tree, no less. Rode with me into a crevice in the earth and back out again, not to mention up, over, and through every obstacle.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “No man could have done that.”

  “You and Charley figger that out all by yourselves?”

  “Yep. And wanna know what else? I think a Humvee is the way to go this time.”

  “We got one?”

  “Two. Down around the corner near the luxury cars.”

  She pulled him to a darker area of the underground structure. “All the spaces are numbered, and they coincide with the key Peg-Board in the attendant’s shack. There’s hardly a car in here with less than half a tank of gas, and most of ’em are full.”

  “People must have been prepared.”

  “Some were listening to the rumors of war, apparently.”

  Buck tapped her head. “Thank you, Charley.” He surveyed the selection of vehicles—dozens of them, mostly new—and let out a low whistle. “When God blesses, he blesses.” But Chloe had grown quiet. “Whatcha thinking?” he said.

  She pursed her lips and buried her hands in her jacket pockets. “About what fun we would have had if we’d been lovers at any other time in history.”

  He nodded. “We wouldn’t have been believers.”

  “Someone might have gotten to us. Look at us. This is the most fun I’ve had in ages. It’s like we’re in a free car dealership and it’s our turn to pick. We’ve got a beautiful baby and a free sitter, and all we have to do is decide what model and color car we want.”

  She rested against a white Hummer and Buck joined her. She shook her head. “We’re older than our years, wounded, scarred, scared. It won’t be long before our days will be spent looking for ways to just stay alive. I worry about you all the time. It’s bad enough living now, but I couldn’t go on without you.”

  “Yes, you could.”

  “I wouldn’t want to. Would you, without me? Maybe I shouldn’t ask.”

  “No, Chlo’, I know what you mean. We have a cause, a mission, and everything seems crystal clear. But I wouldn’t want to go on without you either. I would. I’d have to. For Kenny. For God. For the rest of the Force. Like Tsion says, for the kingdom. You’d have been the best thing that ever happened to me even if you weren’t my whole life. But you are. Let’s watch out for each other, keep each other alive. We’ve got only three and a half years to go, but I want to make it. Don’t you?”

  “’Course.”

  She turned and held him tightly for a long minute, and they kissed fiercely.

  When David finally mince-stepped his way down the fourth floor of the employee residence tower, he found room 4223 open a crack, a sliver of light peeking out. He was about to knock when a dark hand poking out the end of a quilted robe thrust his phone out at him.

  “Thanks, ma’am,” he said. “I’ve got to run.”

  “Ma’am?!” Nurse Palemoon said. “I can’t be that much older’n you, boy. How old are you?”

  “Why?”

  She opened the door and leaned wearily against the jamb. Her hair was in a ponytail, and her eyes looked sleepy behind puffy cheeks. David was surprised how short she was. “I’m not even thirty yet,” she said, “so quit with the ma’am, all right?”

  “Fair enough. Listen, I’m late for a meeting. I wanted to thank you, and—”

  “I said I wanted to show you something.”

  “So you did. What? And why did you take my phone?”

  “Well, that’s sort of what I wanted to show you.”

  David didn’t want to be rude, but what was this game? She just stood there, arms folded, gazing at him with raised brows. “OK,” he said. “What?”

  She didn’t move. Oh, brother, he thought. She’s not trying to make a move on me. Please!

  He slipped the phone in his pocket and gestured with both palms raised. “Oh!” she said. “You’re in the dark.”

  I sure am.

  She straightened and flipped a switch just inside the door. The tiny light above her door illuminated them both. She matched his gesture and he stopped breathing. You’ve got to be kidding! Plain as the nose on her face, the mark was clear on her forehead.

  “Check it,” she said. “I wouldn’t blame you. I know yours is real. I rubbed it with alcohol.”

  David looked up and d
own the hall, asked her to forgive him, licked his thumb, and pressed it against her forehead as she leaned in to him. He looked both ways one more time and leaned down to embrace her briefly. “Sister,” he whispered. “I am glad to see you! I didn’t know we had anybody in Medical.”

  “I don’t know of anyone else,” she said. “But as soon as I saw your mark and knew your rank, I thought of your phone.”

  “You’re brilliant,” he said.

  “You’re welcome. I’ll be back in touch.”

  “I’m sure you will.”

  “And thanks, Nurse P—”

  “Hannah,” she said. “Please, David.”

  On his way back to the elevator he checked his phone. There were several messages, none from Annie. He would visit the morgue only as a last resort. He speed-dialed the Supreme Commander’s office and reached Sandra, the assistant Carpathia and Fortunato had shared.

  “Glad to hear you’re up and about,” she said. “They’re expecting you. I’ll tell them you’ll be a few minutes.”

  Assuming that because David had finally gotten Albie’s clearance into the system he might also have passed along the location of the Pueblo bunker, Rayford jogged to the fighter to grab Albie’s computer on their way out.

  “This used to be an interstate,” he said, driving Judy Hamilton’s nondescript minivan south on C-25. “Until everything got renamed for St. Nick.”

  Albie was accessing data. “It’s here,” Albie said. “The interchanges and exits are still under construction, so watch for a hard left into Pueblo. I’ll tell you from there. Humph. Pinkerton Stephens. There’s a handle for you. The man we want to see there.”

  “Heard of him?”

  Albie shook his head. “Ask me tomorrow.”

  A few minutes later they passed the Quonset-hut-style building deep off a side road. Rayford said, “Question. Why not come in here with a GC jeep—complete the image?”

  “Surprise. You told Ms. Durham in no uncertain terms you were not coming, knowing they were listening. They’re not expecting anyone. Let them wonder who’s pulling in. I show up in uniform, outranking everyone; they don’t recognize the civilian. They’ll worry more about impressing us than making up a story. Anyway, I don’t want to transport this woman in an open jeep, do you?”