The Left Behind Collection: All 12 Books (236 page)

Annie left, still looking exhausted, and David moved atop an observation deck that had been fashioned as the second floor of one of the medical tents. He watched as the barricades were pulled away and the crowd slowly began to move toward the bier.

Someone hurrying around the outside of the courtyard distracted David, heading toward where the evidence room had already been dismantled. It was a woman carrying a bulky, paper package. He scampered down and excused himself through the crowd to get to the area from the opposite direction of the woman.

When he arrived he saw her, Dr. Eikenberry, hurrying back the way she had come. Guy Blod stood there with the package. He looked at David and shrugged. “We’re going to make dawn,” he said. “Thanks to your help.”

David didn’t want to be pals with Guy. But he did want to know what was in the package. “What’ve you got there, Minister Blod?”

“Just something she said the Supreme Commander wants in the statue.”

“
In
the statue?”

Guy nodded. “Which means it has to go in now, because once we weld this together, the only things that will get inside it will have to be smaller than the eyeballs, nostrils, or mouth. I mean, at four times life-size, they’ll be plenty big, but . . .”

“May I?” David said, reaching for the package.

“Whatever,” Guy said. “It’s going to burn anyway.”

“Burn?”

“Or melt. The hollow legs will be an eternal furnace; don’t you love it?”

“What’s not to love?” David said, peeking through a corner of the paper. In his hands was the real murder weapon.

As Rayford followed Leah and Chloe out of the ersatz bar, one of the GC Peacekeepers was coming in. “You wouldn’t be Ken Ritz, would you?”

Rayford fought for composure and noticed Leah stiffen and Chloe shoot the man a double take. With a furtive nudge, Rayford urged Chloe to keep moving and hoped Leah would do the same.

“Who’s askin’?” Rayford said.

“Just yes or no, pardner,” the guard said.

“Then no,” Rayford said, brushing past.

“Hold on a second there, pop.” Rayford preferred
pardner.
“Let me see some ID.”

“I told you I’m not whoever you’re looking for.”

The guard stood in the doorway with his hand out. Rayford showed his papers.

“So, Mr. Berry, you
know
Ken Ritz?”

“Can’t say that I do.”

“How about your friends?”

“Guess you’d have to ask them.”

“No need to be a smart aleck.”

“My apologies, but how would I know about them if I don’t know him?”

The guard nodded his dismissal, and as Rayford emerged, he heard him calling out in the bar: “Ken Ritz in here? R-I-T-Z!”

Leah and Chloe waited by the Rover while the other guard had one foot on the bumper of the Suburban. He was on the phone.

Rayford walked nonchalantly to the driver’s side of the Rover, and the three climbed in. As he pulled away, Rayford said, “Well, so much for the Suburban.”

“Thanks to me,” Chloe said. “Go ahead and say it, you two. This is all my fault.”

Chaim’s bravado had finally cracked. Buck thought it might have been due to exhaustion from the running, but for whatever reason, the old man was in a panic. Buck was strangely encouraged. There was little more difficult than rescuing someone who didn’t care to be rescued. At least Chaim retained a degree of self-preservation. It was a start.

The Super J sat at a severe angle with a blown tire. The door swung down and T leaned out. “You must be Dr. Rosenzweig,” he shouted.

“Yeah, hey, hi, how are ya,” Chaim said with a wave. “You know we got people coming, and you’ve got a flat tire?”

“I was afraid of that,” T said. He reached to shake Rosenzweig’s hand.

“Save the introductions until the GC shoots us,” Chaim said. “We’ve got to get out of here. Have you taken off in a plane with only one tire?”

“We’re not going to outrun anybody on foot. Let’s give this a try.”

Buck stepped up behind Rosenzweig and tried to guide him up the stairs. He wouldn’t be moved. “This is lunacy, Cameron! There’s barely enough road here to take off if the plane was healthy.”

“You ready to turn yourself in?”

“No!”

“Well, we’re leaving. You coming or taking your chances?” Buck pushed past him up the steps. He grabbed the handle and set himself to lift the door. “Last call,” he said.

“There’s
no
chance on the plane,” Rosenzweig whined. “We’re all going to die.”

“No, Chaim,” Buck said. “Our
only
chance is in the air. Have you given up?”

Rosenzweig leaped aboard as T muscled the plane to the end of the road, turned around, and gave it full throttle. Buck and Chaim, listing far to the left, buckled themselves in. Buck prayed. Chaim muttered, “Lunacy, lunacy. No chance. No hope.”

With the engines screaming, the plane was shuddering, though they weren’t moving. Buck didn’t know what T was doing. As he released the brake and maneuvered the controls, the Super J teetered crazily as it shot down the road.

At the other end the pavement had been twisted and tossed up onto its side to form a four- or five-foot barrier. As they hurtled straight toward it, Buck knew T had to find the right combination of speed and runway to pull this off. Buck couldn’t tear his eyes from the barrier. Chaim sat with his head between his legs, hands clasped behind his head. He moaned, “Oh, God, oh God, oh God,” and Buck had the impression it was a sincere prayer.

It seemed there was no way the J would get enough lift to clear the barrier. T seemed to be doing everything he could to keep the plane level, but the imbalance had to be affecting speed too. At the last instant T seemed to abandon balance and put all his efforts into thrust. The jet lifted off the road, then dropped, and the tire chirped on the pavement before lifting yet again.

Buck grimaced and held his breath as they swept toward the barrier. T must have rolled just enough to avoid a direct hit, because the plane lurched right, and something underneath slammed the barrier. Now they were in no-man’s-land.

“God forgive me!” Chaim shouted as the jet was tossed back to the left, then dipped and nearly crashed as T pulled out all the stops. The tail seemed to drag, and Buck couldn’t imagine how it stayed airborne. They headed for a grove of trees, but it was as if T knew he couldn’t afford the drag that a turn would require. He seemed to set the jet at the shallowest possible angle to clear the trees. That was their one chance to get airborne, and if successful, the Super J would rocket into the night toward Greece. T would have to worry later about conserving fuel and landing on one tire.

Buck sat with fists clenched, eyes shut, grimacing, fully expecting to hit the trees and crash. He was pressed back against his seat, his head feeling the G forces as the Super J broke into open sky. He allowed his eyes to open, and in his peripheral vision, Chaim remained hunched over, now lamenting in Hebrew.

Buck unstrapped but found himself struggling to step toward the cockpit against the acceleration and upward deck slope. “You did it, T!”

“Lost what was left of that bad tire, though,” T said. “Think we lost the whole wheel assembly. I thought we were going down.”

“Me too. That was some takeoff.”

“I’ve got about two hours to decide how to land. I know one-wheel landings can be done, but I’d almost rather pull up the one good wheel and go in belly first.”

“Would this thing take it?”

“Not like a big one would. I’d say we’re fifty-fifty for success either way.”

“That’s all?”

T reached for Buck’s hand. “I’ll see you in heaven, regardless.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I mean it. If I didn’t believe that, I’d have taken my chances with the GC back there.”

Buck started when Chaim spoke, and he realized the Israeli was standing right behind him. “You see, Cameron? I was right! I should not have come! Now we have a one-in-two chance of surviving, and you two are just fine, knowing where you’re going . . .”

“I wouldn’t say I’m fine, Chaim,” Buck said. “I’ll be leaving a wife and son.”

“You’ve already given up?” T said. “I said we’ve got a fifty-fifty chance of landing successfully. Even a crash landing doesn’t have to be fatal.”

“Thanks for that cheery word,” Buck said, turning to head back to his seat.

“Pray for me,” T called after him.

“I will,” Buck said.

“So will I,” Chaim said, and Buck shot him a look. He didn’t appear to be kidding.

After Rosenzweig was buckled in, Buck leaned over and clapped him on the knee. “You don’t have to be afraid of death, you know. I mean dying, yeah, I’m afraid of that too, afraid it’ll hurt, that I might burn. I hate leaving my family. But you’re right. T and I know where we’re going.”

Chaim looked terrible, worse than Buck had seen him since the night before. He couldn’t make it compute. Chaim had seemed almost giddy after escaping the Gala. Then he was suicidal after hearing about Jacov and his family and Stefan. But now he looked grave. So, he was human after all. Despite all the talk of suicide, he was afraid to die.

Buck knew he had to be as forthright with Chaim as he had ever been. “We may meet God tonight, Chaim,” he began, but Rosenzweig immediately made a face and waved him off.

“Don’t think I wasn’t listening all these years, Cameron. There is nothing more you can tell me.”

“Still you refuse?”

“I didn’t say that. I just said I don’t need to be walked through this.”

Buck couldn’t believe it. Chaim said that as if he were going to do “this” on his own.

“I do have one question, however, Cameron. I know you don’t consider yourself an expert like Dr. Ben-Judah, but what is your best guess about how God feels about motives?”

“Motives?”

Chaim looked frustrated, as if he wished Buck caught his drift without Chaim having to explain. He looked away, then back at Buck. “I know God is real,” he said, as if confessing a crime. “There has been too much evidence to deny it. I can’t explain away any of the prophecies, because they all come true. The evidences for Jesus as Messiah nearly convinced me, and I had never been a Messiah watcher. But if I were to do what you and Tsion have been pleading with me to do for so long, I confess it would be with the wrong motive.”

Except for the likelihood that they might be dead within a couple of hours, Buck wished Tsion was with them right then. He wanted to ask Chaim what his motive was, but he sensed he would lose him if he interrupted.

Chaim pressed his lips together and hung his head. When he looked up again, he seemed to fight tears. He shook his head and looked away. “I need to think some more, Cameron.”

“Chaim, I’ve pleaded with you before to not run out of time. Clearly I’m on solid footing to say so now.”

Suddenly Rosenzweig leaned over and grabbed Buck’s elbow. “That’s the very issue! I’m scared to death. I don’t want to die. I thought I did, thought it was the only answer to being a murderer, even if I believed I was just in killing the man. But I did it with forethought, with months of forethought. I planned it, fashioned my own weapon, and saw it through. I have no pity, no sympathy for Nicolae Carpathia. I came to believe, as you do, that he was the devil incarnate.”

That wasn’t quite accurate, but Buck held his tongue. While believers were convinced Carpathia was the Antichrist and deserved to be killed and stay dead, they knew that he would not literally be Satan incarnate until he came back to life. Whether he deserved to live again or not, that was what was prophesied.

“It’s hard for me to fathom that I might have been in God’s plan from the beginning. If it is true that Carpathia is the enemy of God and that he was supposed to die from a sword wound to the head, I feel like Judas.”

Judas? A nonreligious Jew knows the New Testament too?

“Don’t look so surprised, Cameron. Everyone understands what a Judas is. Someone was to betray Jesus, and it fell to Judas. Someone was to murder Antichrist, and while I cannot say it actually fell to me, I took the job into my own hands. But say it
was
my destiny. Though apparently God
wanted
it done, it certainly was not legal. And look at what it has cost me already! My freedom. My peace of mind, which, I admit, is only a distant memory. My loved ones.

“But Cameron, can God accept me if my motive is selfish?”

Buck squinted and turned to look out the window. The dim, sparse lights of Israel receded fast. “We all come to faith selfish in some ways, Chaim. How could it be otherwise? We want to be forgiven. We want to be accepted, received, included. We want to go to heaven instead of hell. We want to be able to face death knowing what comes next.
I
was selfish. I didn’t want to face the Antichrist without the protection of God in my life.”

“But Cameron, I am merely afraid to die! I feel like a coward. Here I did this rash thing, which many would say took courage and even strength of character. At first I took pride in it. Now I know, of course, that God could have used anyone to do it. He could have caused something to pierce Carpathia’s head during the earthquake. He could have had a political rival or a crazy man do it. Perhaps he did! Part of it was compulsion, especially perfecting the weapon. But I had motives, Cameron. I hated the man. I hated his lies and his broken promises to my homeland. I hated even what he did to the practicing Jews and their new temple, even though I did not count myself among them.

“I am without excuse! I am guilty. I am a sinner. I am lost. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to go to hell. But I fear he will cast me out because I squandered so many opportunities, because I resisted for so long, because I suffered even many of the judgments and still was cold and hard. Now, if I come whimpering to God as a child, will he see through me? Will he consider me the little boy who cried wolf? Will he know that down deep I am merely a man who once had a wonderful life and enjoyed what I now see were bountiful gifts from God—a creative mind, a wonderful home and family, precious friends—and became a crazy old fool?

“Cameron, I sit here knowing that all you and Tsion and your dear associates have told me is true. I believe that God loves me and cares about me and wants to forgive me and accept me, and yet my own conscience gets in the way.”

Buck was praying as he had not prayed in ages. “Chaim, if you told God what you’re telling me, you’d find out the depth of his mercy.”

“But, Cameron, I would be doing this only because I’m afraid I’m going to die in this plane! That’s all. Do you understand?”

Buck nodded. He understood, but did he know the answer to Chaim’s question? People through the ages had all kinds of motives for becoming believers, and surely fear was a common one. He’d heard Bruce Barnes say that people sometimes come to Christ for fire insurance—to stay out of hell—only to later realize all the benefits that come with the policy.