The Left Behind Collection: All 12 Books (187 page)

“Noticed last night, that’s all. I even said something to him about it.”

“What’d he say?”

“Some joke about how crackers always think the brothers look strange. I didn’t pursue it.”

“He’s the doctor,” Rayford said. “Let him worry about himself.” That, Buck decided, was a perfect opening. He could tell Rayford that he didn’t sound like his usual compassionate self. But the moment passed when Rayford took the offensive. “What’s
your
schedule today, Buck? Magazine or shelter work?”

“You’re the boss, Ray. You tell me.”

“I could use you downstairs, but suit yourself.”

Buck rose.

Mac delicately lowered the skids onto the pavement at the east side of the hangar that housed the Condor 216. The hangar door was open, the cavernous cargo hold of the Condor also agape. David jumped out before the blades stopped whirring and hurried to unhook the cable from the cargo. Out from the hangar sped a forklift that quickly engaged the first load, smoothly tilted it back against the truck, then spun in a circle and shot back into the hangar. By the time Mac joined David and they shut the hangar door, the forklift operator had shut the Condor cargo hold and was replacing the forklift in a corner.

“Corporal Christopher!” David shouted, and the corporal whirled to face him from a hundred feet away. “Your office, now!”

“Doesn’t look too pleased,” Mac said as they walked to the glassed-in office within the hangar. “No salute, no response. Negative body language. Gonna be a problem?”

“The corporal is my subordinate. I hold all the cards.”

“Just the same, David, you have to give respect to get respect. And we can trust no one. You don’t want one of your key people—”

“Trust me, Mac. It’s under control.”

The name on the office door next to Mac’s had just been repainted: “CCCCC.”

“What
is that?” Mac said.

“Corporal Christopher, Condor Cargo Chief.”

“Please!” Mac said.

David motioned Mac to follow him into the corporal’s office, shut the door, and sat behind the desk, pointing to a chair for Mac. The older man seemed to sit reluctantly.

“What?” David said.

“This is how you treat a subordinate?”

David put his feet on the desk and nodded. “Especially a new one. Got to establish who’s boss.”

“I was taught that if you have to use the word
boss
with an employee, you’ve already lost ’em.”

David shrugged. “Dark ages,” he said. “Desperate times, desperate measures . . .”

Footsteps stopped outside the door, and the knob turned. David called out, “Surely you’ll knock before walking in on your boss and your pilot, won’t you, Corporal?”

The door stopped, open an inch.

“Shut the door and knock, Corporal!” David hollered, his hands behind his head, feet still on the desk.

The door shut, a little too loudly. Then a long pause. Finally, three deliberate and loud raps on the door. Mac shook his head. “This guy even knocks sarcastically,” he whispered. “But you deserve it.”

“Enter,” David said.

Mac’s chair scraped as he bolted upright in the presence of a young woman in fatigues. Under her cap showed short cropped black hair, cut almost like a man’s, but she was trim and comely with large dark eyes, perfect teeth, and flawless skin.

Mac whipped off his cap. “Ma’am.”

“Spare me, Captain,” she said, then turned her scowl on David. “I’m required to knock to enter my own office?”

David had not moved. “Sit down, Mac,” he said.

“When the lady sits down,” Mac said.

“I’m not giving her permission to sit,” David said, and Corporal Christopher waved Mac to his seat. “Captain Mac McCullum, this is Corporal Annie Christopher. Annie, Mac.”

Mac started to rise again, but Annie stepped and shook his hand. “No need, Captain. I know who you are, and your Neanderthal chauvinism is noted. If we’re going to work together, you can quit treating me like a little woman.”

Mac looked at her and then at David. “Maybe you treat her with the respect she deserves,” he said.

David cocked his head. “Like you said, Mac. You never know whom you can trust. As for this being your office, Corporal, everything of yours is mine as long as you’re under my command. This space has been parceled to you to facilitate your doing what I tell you. Understood?”

“Clearly.”

“And, Corporal, I’m not even military, but I know it’s a breach of protocol to keep your head covered in the presence of your superior.”

Annie Christopher sighed and let her shoulders slump as she whipped off her cap. She ran a hand through her short hair and moved to the window between the office and the rest of the hangar. She closed the blinds.

“What are you doing?” David said. “There’s no one out there, and I didn’t give you permission to—”

“Oh, come now, Director Hassid. Do I need your permission for everything?”

David lifted his feet off the desk and sat upright as Annie approached. “As a matter of fact, you do.”

He opened his arms and she sat on his lap. “How are you, sweetheart?” she said.

“I’m good, hon, but I think Mac’s about to have a heart attack.”

Mac slid to the edge of his chair and leaned forward, elbows on knees. “You’re both brats,” he said. “Forgive me, Miss Christopher, if I check your mark.”

“Be my guest,” she said, leaning across the desk so he could reach her. “You can bet that’s what David and I did the day we met.”

Mac cradled the back of her head in his palm and ran his other thumb across the mark on her forehead. He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her gently atop the head. “You’re young enough to be my daughter,” he said, “sister.”

Annie moved to another chair. “And for the record, Captain McCullum, I can’t stand working for either of you. Personnel has a standing request from me, demanding that I be reassigned. The director of my department is condescending and unbearable, and the captain of the Condor is unbearably sexist.”

“But,” David said, “I have informed Personnel that she is not to be catered to. Annie has caused trouble in every department she’s served, and it’s payback time for her. They love it.”

Mac squinted at her, then at David. “I can’t wait to hear your stories,” he said.

Buck postponed his heart-to-heart with his father-in-law when Rayford spread the plans under a light in the basement and asked his advice on how to make the entrance impossible to detect.

“Thought you’d never ask,” Buck said. “Actually, I
have
been noodling this.”

“I’m all ears.”

“You know the freezer in the other duplex?”

“The smelly one.”

Buck nodded. They had discarded the spoiled food, but the stench inside remained. “Move that over here, stock it with what looks like spoiled food but only smells that way because of the residue, and hinge the food trays at the back. Anyone who looks in there will be repelled by the smell and won’t look close at what they assume is spoiled food. They’ll never think to lift the food trays, but if they do, they’ll find a false bottom that opens to the stairs to the shelter. Meanwhile, we put a wall over the current basement door.”

Rayford cocked his head, as if searching his mind for a flaw. He shrugged. “I like it. Now if there was a way to keep it from Hattie.”

Buck looked around. “So I was right? Floyd’s not down here?”

“Mr. McCullum, there’s a message here for you to call Mr. Fortunato,” Annie said.

“Terrific. May I use your phone, Corporal?”

Annie said, “It’s not my phone, sir. It’s merely been parceled out to me. . . .”

He phoned Fortunato’s office. “Mac McCullum returning his call. . . . Yes, ma’am. . . . Friday? . . . How many guests? . . . No, ma’am. You may tell him there was some sort of a snafu about that shipment. He’ll have to talk with the purchasing director, but no, those were not available to be delivered to the palace. . . . Perhaps when we return from Botswana, yes, ma’am.”

Dr. Floyd Charles’s bedroom door was shut. Buck saw Tsion at his computer in the next room, forehead in his hand, elbow on the desk. “You OK, Tsion?”

“Cameron! Come in, please. Just resting my eyes.”

“Praying?”

The rabbi smiled wearily. “Without ceasing. We have no choice, have we? How are you, my friend? Still worried about your father-in-law?”

“Yeah, but I’ll talk to him. I was wondering if you’d seen Doc today?”

“We usually share an early breakfast, as you know. But I was alone this morning. I did not hear him in the basement, and I confess I have not thought about it since. I have been writing. Cameron, we have no idea how long this lull may last between the fifth and sixth woes. I am trying to decide myself whether what John saw in his vision is real or symbolic. As you know—”

“Dr. Ben-Judah, forgive me. I want to hear this—”

“Yes, of course. You should check in on Floyd. We will talk later.”

“I don’t mean to be rude.”

“You need not apologize, Cameron. Now go. We will talk later. Call if you need me.”

Buck had never grown used to the privilege of living in the same house as the man whose daily words were like breath to millions around the world. Though Tsion was usually within a few dozen steps, when he was too busy or too tired to talk, the others in the household downloaded and saved his messages from the web. The best part about living with him was that he was as excited about the messages as were his audiences. He labored over them all morning and most of the afternoon in preparation for transmitting no later than early evening. All over the world sympathetic translators converted his words into the languages of their people. Other computer-literate believers invested hours every day in cataloguing Dr. Ben-Judah’s information and making it easily accessible to newcomers.

When Tsion came across some startling revelation in his study, Buck often heard him exult and knew he would soon pad out to the top of the stairs. “Listen to this,” he would call out, “anyone who can hear me!” His knowledge of the biblical languages made his commentary the absolute latest thought on a given passage by the world’s most astute Bible scholar.

Buck couldn’t wait to hear what Tsion was wrestling with about the prophesied sixth woe. But for now he worried about Doc. He tapped lightly on his bedroom door. Then louder. He turned the knob and entered. It was the middle of the afternoon, the spring sun high in the sky. But the room was dark, the shades pulled. And Doc Charles was still in bed. Very still.