Jacob's Trouble 666 is a novel by Terry, which was published a number of years ago. It tells the story of Jacob Zen, a young, lower echelon U.S. government official, who is forced to take on staggering responsibilities, when millions of people vanish, and his world begins coming apart. Terry wanted to share with you this fictionalized account of the Rapture and of the first part of the Tribulation era in serialized form. Although it is fiction, it is a story that could take on startling reality with your very next breath, because Christ's shout: "Come up hither" (Rev 4:1) could happen at any moment!

Chapter 20

The glories of our blood and state Are shadows, not substantial things, There is no armor against fate, Death lays his icy hand on kings. My life did and does smack sweet. Was your youth of pleasure wasteful? Mine I saved and hold complete. Do your joys with age diminish? When mine fail me, I'll complain, Must in death your daylight finish? My sun sets to rise again.

"Jacob!" The bright light hurt his eyes, deluging his mind's ascension on to consciousness and making it difficult to recognize the form bending near him to touch his forehead with a cool cloth. The voice, concerned. "Sweetheart."

Karen! Not a dream... Her arm warm and soft against his hand. Her lovely face surrounded by the dark hair she brushed back to keep it from touching his face, which she lovingly wiped with the damp cloth. Her eyes, the eyes he knew better than he knew his own. Not the drugged, glazed eyes of when they walked the temple's roof. Her lips, soft, hot against his lips, against his forehead, against his cheeks. Her slender hands, cool against his burning skin while caressing him.

"Karen..."

"I'm here. I won't leave you, Darling."

"Well!... How's our boy?" Conrad Wilson stood above him, and behind Karen, smiling. He moved the lamp that had partially blinded Jacob, making his seeing more comfortable. Conrad Wilson, much older in appearance than those years before, but lively, happy.

"They gave you something to make you sleep for a while. The bullet passed by the artery and bone. I know it doesn't feel like it, but it hit nothing of consequence. Just a bit of muscle and fatty tissue, they tell us. You'll be up and around before the day is out."

"What?" Jacob's dryness of throat choked off the questions.

"Much to tell you, my boy. Much!" Conrad Wilson turned toward a nearby doorway and nodded to a man, who went into the adjoining room.

"I want you to eat something while we try to straighten all this out for you."

The man returned and set before Jacob a tray that held bacon, eggs and juice.

"Eat, Jake!" Wilson said. "That stuff is hard to come by these days." "I'm not hungry. I just want to know what's happening." His voice choked. "Why are you a part of them?" He looked to Wilson, then to Karen.

"Oh, Jake!" Karen cried, pressing her face against his chest while she clung to him. Her body quivered in his arms, and his anger dissolved when her tears soaked his chest, and he clutched her tightly and kissed her.

Wilson's voice, too, betrayed emotional upheaval. He spoke softly while not letting control slip. "I have never... and could never be a party to this... monstrous thing, Son. Not from the time they thought they had recruited me, to right this second."

Wilson patted Karen's shoulder while Jacob held her. "She was drugged and programmed. Brainwashed through new, devilish technologies even I had never heard of. Even so, she fought them. Held on to enough of herself to be of great help to us in getting you free from them."

"I had to act as if I were devoted that night, Jake," Karen said, lifting her face from his chest. "Conrad and the others had already deprogrammed me, but I pretended to be a part of them in order to keep you alive long enough for us to break you free. It was almost unbearable... To not be able to hold you... to love you... knowing you were feeling so alone."

"Never doubt this girl's love, Son. Only a special sort could survive what she's been through." The diplomat paced the small room's floor while he talked. "From the time they took her at Stone Oaks and implanted the transponder in you, they worked their plan almost to perfection. And, incidentally, we took out the Sector Coordinator Allegiant while you were out. Anyway, their major flaw has always been their remarkable inability to take into consideration human will, especially the will of people who've been born into liberty and are determined to remain free, or at least relatively free, from oppressive controls.

"They operate on the assumption, like the Soviet system always did, that bribery, intimidation, brainwashing, blackmail or brute force, will get them anything they want. What they failed to calculate, in my case, was that I've been dealing with just such methodology for decades. The only difference was, that where the Russians and Chinese and the others were across the table from me, with no real personal holds on me, the Naxos bunch had me over the barrel. Rather than fight them, I became enthusiastically dedicated to their cause... turned totally against you. To have done less would have betrayed my ultimate objective before their quite observant eyes and ears.”

Wilson’s voice had sadness in it. “Of course, I pulled it off at the cost of, probably, thousands of lives.” His eyes glistened. “I had to become one of them… Like you did, Jacob. Totally ruthless in the administration of their earth-saving justice. My argument with myself was and is that if this dictatorship is to be somehow converted to something better, it is justifiable to sacrifice those who must die to achieve the goal.

If there’s a chance for humanity to struggle out from under this, it has to begin with a nucleus group of people who hate injustice and inhumanity as deeply as Krimhler despises justice and freedom and human rights. In spite of their constant watching and listening, there are many of us who have never stopped fighting them. And, there are thousands of others who’ll join us once they know we are organized and have growing strength. The millions who worship at Krimhler’s feet will keep on worshipping, of course. But they’re not fighters. They won’t come to his defense in a military confrontation. They’re all like zombies with their out-of-body meditation, drugs… Their total lack of sexual or moral restraints, except those the Interface imposes. They will all sit down, bleary-eyed, and not knowing what to do next, once their Interface-governed lives are disrupted.

“Our people are as determined as Herrlich Krimhler’s elite, and probably almost as great in number. That is, as great as the number who will actively fight to the death for him. But the time for military is not yet. There’s still a lot of organizing, much planning to be done.”

Jacob sat upright on the edge of the cot, his senses going dark before they cleared when his blood flow adjusted to the changed posture. “Why did they let me live, if they knew I killed that Sector Coordinator and was planning to work against them? It makes no sense.”

“It makes perfect sense. At least most of it does. Once they set you up for Krimhler’s assassination, stealing your watch and planting it as evidence by the murder weapon, they had me in a position that I had to cooperate with them or else be accused of being a party to the assassination. Both Karen and I had to disavow any ties to you. The two people closest to you, testifying before Interface that you were guilty. A very convincing case!

“They didn’t anticipate you would be quite so good at eluding them. Killing off their crack agents with that exploding attaché case, and later, the fire at Marchek’s home… How did you do that?” Wilson paused, smiling and shaking his head with amusement in his eyes, not really wanting an answer.

“Of course they could track you, and did… until you found the Allegiant transponder and took it out. Very clever, putting it into the body and planning the fire with the helicopter to destroy their ability to identify all but the tracking device. I always thought I should’ve gotten you into CIA work.” Wilson chuckled, continuing to pace and talk, stopping periodically to make his points to his peculiar fashion of gesticulation.

“When you removed the Allegiant, They decided to let you go on feeling your way through your confusion. Decided not to pick you up and hold you, out of sight, until the assassination was accomplishment.”

"Why?"

"They wanted you free to let you help them build a case they could use in a couple of ways. You became the No. 1 enemy around which all citizens could rally. That hatred for you helped take their minds off their own miserable plight. And, they used that time you were on the loose as Herrlich Krimhler's assassin, to stir emotions, making him the most loved and adored martyr in history. Thus, the Six Ways Plan, as Krimhler's legacy to them, was quickly and completely embraced by all."

"What about the tracking device, when it got out of their range? How could they keep up with my movements?"

"Melisa Jantzen," Wilson said, stopping his pacing.

"Melisa?"

"Real name's Moravia Krill."

"One of them from the start?"

"Yes. Sent to the abandoned apartment because they knew you would eventually find out about the implantation, once you viewed the stolen tapes. A helpless female, they reasoned, could do what the other agents couldn't."

"And she did her job well! You raised an idiot!"

"No, Son. You couldn't have known those things... Not in your state of mind during that time."

"What about Kerry Vinchey?"

"They got me when I left with the body of the Coordinator." Kerry Vinchey stood in the doorway, smiling. He came to Jacob and took his hand, then hugged him. "They forced me down and would have killed me or run me through one of their torture palaces, I imagine, if not for Conrad."

"I convinced them to let me have a crack at Kerry... to learn all I could about your plans as he understood them. I, after all, knew your mind better than anyone. I convinced them after a time that Kerry would be invaluable to the cause. Made him my personal pilot. He flew you out of D.C."

Vinchey and Jacob embraced again, Jacob's throat swelling with emotion so that he had to fight the need to cry. "And what about Francis?" he said, finally getting control.

Wilson said nothing for a moment, his facial expression confirming the worst, before the words came. "I'm sorry, Son. I was away attending a meeting at Bonn. She was executed before I could stop it."

"Why her? Why did they have to kill Francis? She wasn't a threat. She couldn't have hurt them."

"She was sick and meant nothing to INterface but an unwanted effort to keep her alive. Time and personnel they could better use on other things. She was an enemy of INterface, tied to you, and could serve as an example to others who might think about resistance. They delight in demonstrating that they're not beyond butchering children or women to reinforce their demands."

Jacob sat, silent, contemplating into a mind-void which filled with hatred suppressed since his rage on the steps of the crystal pyramid throne in the Jerusalem temple.

"INterface allowed your Sector Coordinator deception to go on until the time they considered appropriate, because they knew they had you under their thumb at all times. They knew about the Bible, of your explosive belt contraption. Nothing escapes them," Wilson said, raising his silver eyebrows in puzzlement. "I don't know. Maybe Krimhler is, like his worshipers believe, some sort of supernatural being, some alien from out there somewhere." He gestured toward the cosmos.

"His exact reason or reasons for keeping you on the hook, I don't know. But I suspect, much of it has to do with his innate cruelty to see a man go through all that struggle, thinking he's getting somewhere, then devastating him by showing him that the world is against him and would rather believe lies than truth... Showing him, by putting him on exhibition for all to watch him kneel at the guillotine. I suspect this is one way he gets his greatest enjoyment.

"But why you, Jacob Zen... to accuse you of being the assassin, so he can miraculously rise from the dead in some crazy, symbolic similarity to the way Jesus Christ was supposed to have arisen? I just don't know, Jake. I don't know. But just as I'm sure Krimhler's miraculous resurrection was a hoax, I'm equally certain all this has a natural explanation, and this dictatorship, a natural solution."

"No!... No, No, No! There's nothing natural in this! It's all too much like what's written in the Scriptures to be coincidence," Jacob said, his tone viciously argumentative.

Surprised at the sudden agitation, Wilson studied Jacob silently, then spoke, attempting to bring his foster son back to reality. "Surely you can't mean you believe that stuff. Man created this hell, not some higher power. Certainly we shouldn't blame a Judaeo-Christian God! If we accept that sort of thing, we're all goners, no matter what we do! Man did it to himself and only man... real flesh and blood, can change things."

"Like we've changed things to this point? Like going from clean air to this stench; from gun powder to nuclear weapons? From democracy to a degree of dictatorship the Third Reich didn't even approach achieving? Man really knows how to build a better world! He had the chance to create something good but instead created something that can obliterate everything on the planet!"

"Coincidence. It could've gone either way. To the good, or to the bad."

"But it went to the bad. It always goes, in the long run, to the bad, doesn't it? Just like the Scriptures say."

"Fallen man?... Original sin?" Wilson still in puzzlement of Jacob's stand.

"You have a better explanation for our ways?"

"Man is an ambitious animal; I certainly can't deny that. The more ambitious ones among us always seem to agree. But that's all been explained by Darwin."

"It was explained by Scriptures. The love of money is the root of all evil. Money is power; power is control. The greater the control, the greater the degree of subservience, and, ultimately, slavery... even worship."

"The Judaeo-Christian God demands worship," Karen interjected, still massaging Jacob's neck. He stopped her and stood from the cot.

"God doesn't demand in the sense Herrlich Krimhler demands. With God, there is free-will choice. Man chooses. With the Krimhlers of history you either worship or are tortured or killed or both."

Jacob pulled his shirt on with Karen's help, his mind turning to Hugo Marchek.

"You shouldn't move around for a while, Son. You'll cause more bleeding," Conrad Wilson said, steadying him.

"What do you think you're doing, Jacob?" Karen said, seeing the determination on his face she had seen many times before.

"I'm going to prove that it's all part of the prophecies. That this will all end only when the prophecies have been fulfilled. We can't change any of it, but we've got to try to understand it."

"What are you talking about?" Karen questioned, more with concern for him than with irritation.

"Dr. Marchek said there would be a mass disappearance of people just before the end of what he called the 'dispensation of grace.' That is the period between Christ's crucifixion and the Rapture of His Church, which is what he said the mass disappearance would be."

"Which church is that? The Catholic? The Episcopal? The Baptist, Methodist? What?" Conrad Wilson said, his voice tinged with sarcasm.

"The Church, according to Marchek, is, was, made up of all who truly accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior... Trusted His sacrifice on the cross at Calvary to atone for their sins... Trusted that act to serve as the only sacrifice acceptable to God the Father. Since the Rapture, salvation can come only through what Dr. Marchek described as 'enduring to the end.' If necessary, one must die for faith in Christ as the only Son of God, the only Redeemer. The disappearance caused the instantaneous changing of human, mortal flesh into immortal matter designed for eternal existence. At that point, the Church Age ended and the Tribulation Period, which includes the rise and dictatorial world-rule of Antichrist, began.

"A short time later, apparently having something to do with Israel making a security covenant with Krimhler and the U.E.S., the era of the Apocalypse was initiated."

"Come now, my boy! That's too fantastic for a logical mind such as yours to swallow," Wilson said, holding Jacob's shoulders, speaking as if he could reason the madness out of his foster son.

"It all fits." Jacob pulled away from Wilson, then limped to the doorway where Kerry Vinchey stood listening to the debate. Jacob turned to Wilson and Karen. "Clothing remained wherever the people were before they vanished. All the infants and young children, not old enough to be accountable for their souls, were taken."

"There are children," Karen said.

"Infants -- children born since the thing happened, yes, and some in their teens. But have you seen any between those ages?"

Karen thought a moment, a look of puzzled agreement coming on her face; she did not answer.

"I haven't analyzed it, but if I had, I'll wager all who disappeared would fit very similar theological profiles. I think we'd find they believed about Jesus Christ in the same way. I'm certain of it."

"You spoke of proof. Present it if you have it, so we can all believe this... prophecy stuff," Wilson said lightly. No matter that Wilson's tone and expression said, the old diplomat wouldn't be convinced regardless of evidence produced. Jacob must know for himself whether his gut-felt suspicion, or spiritually-discerned revelation, or whatever it was urging him onward, was right, and whether it would lead him to the truth.

"I wish I didn't have to ask you to risk your neck after everything you've been through for me, Kerry," he said, turning to his friend. "But I can't fly that thing, so it looks like you're my only hope... again."

"Just say where to and when," Vinchey said, grinning and taking Jacob's arm to help him from the room.

They left at dusk, which, because of pollution, no longer differed significantly from earlier times of day. The helicopter's nose tipped slightly downward while Vinchey throttled its engine to optimum speed. Reaching Rockville would take 20 minutes, allowing time to ponder what they might find when they got there, if indeed they could carry out the search for answers without being shot from the sky or picked up once they landed.

"What's this about, Jacob?" Karen interrupted his thoughts, pressing against his shoulders for the closeness she had missed. "You really should've let that leg rest."

"There's no time. They're looking for us, and I've learned that they find what they look for. I'm hoping they won't expect us to be moving around so freely. That they'll be looking for us to hole up somewhere. When they've exhausted their search in the hidden places, they'll start looking for us to be moving among them openly. We've got to get this done now, before they begin checking everything that moves."

"Why Rockville?"

"To prove to myself, I guess, that we're up against something more than just another attempt at world conquest."

"What difference does it make what kind of dictatorship it is? We're all on the same side. We all want to destroy it. It doesn't matter if you're right or if Conrad is right."

"The difference is important because if Uncle Conrad is wrong, and if Hugo Marchek was right, we can't fight against them... against Krimhler, the way dictatorships and dictators have historically been opposed."

"You really do believe Dr. Marchek was right, don't you? That INterface is prophecy being fulfilled."

"Of course he doesn't really believe it, my dear," Conrad Wilson said from the seat in front of them. "He would never go to such lengths to convince himself, otherwise. And I wouldn't come along, if I were not equally determined to watch him prove the fallacy of Marchek's contention."

"He believed it with his whole heart," Karen said. "He was a wonderful man, and one who would never deliberately lie."

"Of course he was a fine person," Wilson said, reaching behind him to pat Karen's hand. "My question to Jacob is: How can Marchek prove his theology to us now that he's dead, when he couldn't prove it while he was alive? It's the old thing of trying to prove the existence of God, scientifically. It cannot be done."

"Maybe now it can," Jacob said with some irritation.

"How can you find anything at Rockville? There's nothing left. Dr. Marchek's home is gone," Karen said.

"There's something of him still there. Or maybe there isn't; we'll see shortly."

"I'll say this, the two fellows we took with us when we broke you out of D.C. believe the prophecy angle," Wilson said. "What?"

"Those two Orthodox Jewish prisoners. But, of course, you couldn't know. We emptied the cellblock when we stormed the place."

"And you took those two men with you? The ones who were in with me?" "Yes." "Where are they now?" "Back at the compound we just left. They said something about some exodus from the INterface Pharaoh, but wouldn't be more specific." "They said something about that to me," Jacob said. "You say they talked about prophecy?"

"I heard one of them say something about a place prepared by God to hide his people during a time of persecution. The other one, quoted Scripture... from Isaiah, I think he said it was." Karen said.

"There's a place I can put down just ahead, Jake. Some pretty good cover from the trees, looks like," Kerry Vinchey shouted from the pilot's seat.

"How far from the cemetery?" Jacob shouted, leaning forward to hear the pilot's answer.

"According to the chart, it's no more than one, one-and-a-half kilometers due north."

"Good! Let's do it!"

Vinchey swung the big copter around, then nestled it gently into the open area of high weeds surrounded by trees, whose leaves struggled to achieve natural colors but could not because of the caustic atmospheric inversions that frequently squatted at ground level. Although the season should produce moist, hearty foliage that clung to its sources of nourishment, the dried vegetation flew about in the fury whipped by the helicopter blades. Jacob scanned the area through the small porthole, looking through the dust and debris for signs they might have been detected.

"You think they monitored us?" he said to Vinchey when the engine became silent.

"They wouldn't expect anyone to be so open about it. I think you're right about that. If they had suspected anything other than it being a routine shuttle or surveillance, they'd have confronted us in the air and tried to force us down in a place of their choosing... or just shot us down, period. But just in case I'm wrong..." He lifted the lid of a heavy metal box near the pilot's seat, took out an automatic rifle and tossed it back to Jacob. "They won't put us on display while we lose our heads." He took out another rifle and handed it to Conrad Wilson, then retrieved yet another from the box for himself. He pulled back the bolt and let it snap shut, feeding a round into the chamber.

"What about me?" Karen said. The pilot handed her a rifle and she followed his example, pulling back the bolt then releasing it.

Jacob watched her handle the weapon while Vinchey instructed her in its use, then took her hand and kissed it. "I wish you had stayed back there."

"Why? If anything happens, why should I be there, with no hope of being with you again? If it's to end here, then let it end for both of us. That couldn't be as bad as being alone, waiting for them to find me again."

He could not argue with the truth in her logic. Now, to wait for the blackness the thick, abrasive smog would assure, before attempting the, perhaps, dangerously foolish research into what he was driven to know.

The old backhoe had not been used for some time. Its starter and choke, as well as the controls, were stiff and stubborn from the corrosion which came with the disuse and lack of maintenance. There was plenty of gasoline in the tank, and he hoped there would not be condensation to the extent it would make the fuel burn improperly, or not at all. Jacob replaced the cap to the fuel tank, looking over the cemetery, using the flashlight's powerful beam. Conrad Wilson and Kerry Vinchey tried to see beyond the stone fences, weapons poised and alert to any movement.

"No one has attended this place in months," Karen said quietly, walking among headstones, occasionally brushing high grass away from one or the other of the markers to read the names. "The crypt is in this area, I think. It's been so long, and it all looks so different. Shine your light on this one," she said, walking toward the dingy gray crypt building centered in Jacob's light. She ripped and stomped weeds to get to the iron-barred doors of the small mausoleum, then read the words etched in the once white facade.

"This is it!," she said excitedly, wiping away caked dirt and cobwebs from the engraved word, "MARCHEK."

It was all so completely different from that day they had put the old man's body in the crypt, which looked so small now in the overgrown graveyard. A thing that should be left a part of undisturbed antiquity, and death.

That stormy day, as gloomy in its way as this black night, came back to Jacob while he joined Karen at the barred gate. Conversations and accusations of conspiracy, of cold, depressing rain, of Karen's tears, and the beginning of involvement in what Wilson called a natural development of history, but what Marchek had assured him was the fulfilling of prophecies. Prophecies which could be finished only when the supernatural had run its course as written in the old Bible Marchek once offered him. Would be consummated when the Prince of Peace returned in power and glory to bind and banish the world's last great dictator, and war from the earth. A process that would first become evident when millions of people vanished before the astonished eyes of their fellow humans. When, like Christ at the resurrection, they were in an instant, "in the twinkling of an eye," as Marchek had put it, transformed from mortal flesh into immortal beings. Like Jesus Christ, the shroud. Like Saryeva Marchek, the scorched dress.

"How are you going to get in? They won't budge," Karen said, watching him test the iron gates.

"The backhoe... if it will still run."

Moments later, he pulled the choke free from its oxidation-stuck position and worked it in and out several times. The battery should be okay if its energy was not depleted at the time the grave diggers stopped using it. It was a self-sealed battery, which had been well sheltered from the elements. But would it be strong enough to awaken the engine from its months of idleness?

He pushed the starter button and the engine turned but refused to start. Twice more and it caught. Two cylinders at first, then revved to power, its straight-up exhaust pipe cracking sharply and dispelling black smoke.

"If that doesn't bring 'em here," Vinchey shouted to Conrad Wilson above the popping engine, "They're not in the area!"

Wilson nodded agreement, both men continuing their vigilance. Jacob intent on his singular objective, steered the machine to the front of the building and rammed the comb-edge of the trenching scoop, attached to the front of the backhoe's crooked arm, into the barred gate-door. He throttled up the engine and the backhoe lurched, causing the crypt's door to creak and pop, but did not break the gate free from its moorings. He put the machine into reverse and backed, pulling the iron gate with the shovel, whose comb-like steel projections had become lodged between the bars. The gate groaned, tearing loose with a loud, scraping crunch.

He maneuvered the backhoe to directly in front of the opening so that the lights of the machine lit the burial chamber's interior, then hopped from the operator's seat, forgetting in his excitement the wound in his leg. Contact with the ground sent a stab of pain up his calf and into his back, causing both legs to buckle. Karen and Wilson hurried to help him keep from collapsing.

"I'm okay. Give me the flashlight," he said, taking the light from Karen then limping into the crypt, fighting his way through cobwebs while he directed the beam at the several cement and marble vaults lining the walls. He quickly found the one inscribed with Hugo Marchek's name and brushed away the thick layer of dust to read what was carved in the vault covering.

"To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord."

"Hold this." Jacob handed her the flashlight. "Give me a hand with this." Vinchey and Wilson positioned themselves around the thick marble slab and in unison, jerked upward. It would not move.

"Try sliding it," Jacob said, pushing then adjusting to try to pull the covering to one side then the other.

"It's no doubt sealed," Wilson said, looking around for something with which to pry. Jacob went outside and retrieved a rusting crowbar he remembered kicking out of his way when he sat in the operator's seat before starting the backhoe.

Within seconds, the heavy marble piece was leveraged to one side, uncovering a chamber containing a bronze colored coffin.

Jacob's heart raced. Suddenly his actions seemed in slow-motion, like much of his existence had been while under domination of Trachetrol II. He looked into Karen's eyes and saw a mixture of apprehension and anticipation at seeing the body of the old man she had worked so closely with — had loved so much. "Give me the light," he said, taking the flashlight and holding the beam on the smaller lid of the split-top casket. With his free hand, he lifted the lid, Karen looking over his shoulder. "He's not there!" "Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen!"

The words he had read in Marchek's Bible shook his mind when Karen spoke the fact, which, despite his deepest suspicions, he was not prepared to accept.

"The clothes! Look! The suit they buried him in, Jacob. They look like they've collapsed on his body. Or where his body was! It couldn't have decomposed that way. Not skeleton and all! Could it?"

Jacob said nothing while opening the larger lid of the coffin. He shined the light first along the gray suit, with its jacket still buttoned, then along the lining of the coffin's lids.

"Looks like it's been burned... Like it's been scorched," Kerry Vinchey said, adding the beam from his flashlight to that of Jacob's.

"Just like his sister," Jacob said beneath his breath.

"Curious way for the body to deteriorate," Wilson said, peering into the casket. "This terrible pollution, no doubt, can have effects we don't understand yet."

"On a body, sealed air-tight? Sealed up before atmospheric conditions got so bad?" Jacob's question was put with mild anger. "And what about this scorched material?"

Wilson made no response, but shined his own light along the collapsed material of Marchek's burial suit.

Jacob unbuttoned the suit coat and carefully removed each flap to uncover the shirt.

"The shirt's burned too!" Karen said.

The white shirt's front was scorched brown, from the buttoned collar beneath the tied necktie, to where it was covered by the waistline of the trousers.

Jacob directed his flashlight beam to the opened casket lids and slowly moved the circle of light down the satin lining.

"Put your lights on the lining," he said; the other men added their beams to Jacob's, illuminating the entire length of the once white material. "Just like the shroud," Jacob said.

The discoloration, in varying gradations of brown, formed the negative image of a man's naked body, it's hands folded neatly upon its chest.

"It... It's Dr. Marchek!" Karen said in a whisper.

Preparations for the move were underway by the time Vinchey set the helicopter down near the small, rectangular building. The twirling red lights on the bird's belly, and the bright landing lights, reflected off the yellowed, nearly-bare trees, making them appear from the passengers' view to be grotesque monsters with bony, reaching fingers, grasping to pull their victims into themselves. Several men carrying machine guns greeted them at the helicopter's door after Vinchey cut the engine.

"Everything is ready to move, Sir," one of the men said to Wilson, who looked over the compound, watching the darkly dressed men and women throwing the final contents from the buildings into the canvas-covered back of the old truck marked with white stars and the words "U.S. ARMY".

"Where are the two men? The two prisoners you brought with me from D.C.?" Jacob asked, getting the attention of one of the men, who looked to Conrad Wilson for approval before answering.

"I believe they're helping get things ready in that area." the man said, pointing, after Wilson nodded affirmatively.

"I need to know about the hiding place they've mentioned. Maybe they'll tell me now that they know we're not their enemy." "Why? What good will it do?" Karen said.

"There's nowhere to go to get away from him. I'm sure, now, that Krimhler is the one written about in the prophecies of Daniel and the Revelation. He will devour the entire planet, according to the Scriptures, except the Jewish remnant. They'll be protected. If we're to survive, it will be with them, in the place prepared for them by God," Jacob said while they walked into one of the buildings. He went into the room where he had been placed after his rescue, the room with his belongings. Karen, Wilson and Vinchey followed.

He went through his things and picked from them Marchek's Bible. "I remember the verse being in Isaiah." He thumbed to the prophetical book and found the boldly underlined passage. "Here it is... Isaiah the 26th chapter, verse 20."

"Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation is past"

"Here are the men you wanted, Mr. Zen." The man who spoke moved out of the doorway to let the two strangely-robed men pass. "How is your leg wound, Jacob?" the taller man said.

"It's nothing," Jacob said, anxious to pursue the more vital matters. "Sir, can you answer my question?"

"In the Scripture... Isaiah 26, verse 20. That's the verse about when God will hide his people, Israel during the rule of the Beast, the Antichrist, isn't it?"

"Yes," the man's eyes flashed acknowledgment; he was obviously pleased Jacob had made the discovery.

"Do you trust me? Trust us?" Jacob gestured toward the others in the room.

"Enough to tell us where this place of hiding is? It's our only hope now. You know that Krimhler will not be stopped. He will gobble us up, eventually, just like everything else."

The robed man spoke softly. "You yet do not understand, although you believe."

"What do you mean?"

"About Jesus of Nazareth... That He is the Christ."

"I believe it. There are no other explanations. I know these prophecies have come to pass and that the others will also come to pass. What do you mean, I don't understand?"

"That there is nothing you, or anyone else can do to stop the Antichrist. It will be done as written. If one is sealed within Jehovah's shelter, he is there for the duration. It is not a military headquarters. The battle is between the ultimate Good and the ultimate Evil, and the Lord shall fight it. God has already won, because the prophecies will conclude exactly as given in His Holy Word."

"If you want to fight Herrlich Krimhler, futile though that effort would be, you must do it from beyond the safe haven prepared by the Lord of Hosts."

The words were true. Jacob knew it! The only way to survive, to endure to the end. And in that moment it became clear in his soul. The way to live, the way to Salvation was, had always been, the way of the Cross, the shelter provided by Christ!

"Where? Will you tell us? Where is this place of hiding?"

"You will find it in Maan Muhafuzah, in a place known as Wadi-Sik."

"Jordan?" Conrad Wilson said with surprise. "Can you show us exactly where to find it?"

The man looked at Jacob, ignoring Wilson's anxiously put question.

"Go to the place of the Rock... to Petra. There you shall find the House of Chambers and safety."

Jacob looked to Vinchey, who was stuffing articles of clothing into a duffle bag, while sitting on a cot. "Think we can get there?"

"I'd hate to risk flying a chopper, even a transcontinental class, over that much water, although it could be done with extra fuel tanks. Couldn't take but a few people. If we did make it to the coast, there would be no parts for her if she broke down. After a flight like that, the bird would need major maintenance."

"I still have some people I can depend on to help," Conrad Wilson said. "Good people, who have access to aircraft and who will do what I ask, so long as we can make it look as if the aircraft was stolen." "What about a pilot?" Jacob said.

"We'll get whatever Kerry's checked out on. Probably, it would be best to appropriate something with hover-landing capability so we won't need a long strip to set down on. You're checked out on that sort of thing, aren't you, Kerry?" "A few planes," Vinchey said. "But I can handle whatever it is, as long as it's not too big."

"How soon can you arrange this... appropriation?" Jacob said.

"It will take a few days at least. We can take the helicopter to the prearranged spot. I'll have my contacts meet us there."

"How will you be able to get in touch with them without tipping off the wrong people?" Karen said.

"Old-fashion-telephone, my dear. And by using a code, which they won't have enough time to break before the deed is done. The fools don't think that anything can be carried on in such an obvious way any more. Witness our trip to Rockville. They're so heavily into secretive, high-tech stuff, they rarely monitor the good old telephone."

"We'll need fuel enough to reach..."

Wilson cut Vinchey short. "How about one that will take us straight through?"

"You can get an H-9?"

"Can you fly it?"

"Love to!"

"Then it will be available, my friend. I told you I have people who haven't forgotten this old broken-down diplomat!"

"I get the impression you don't want to go with us," Jacob said, turning to his former fellow prisoners. The men were gone.

He opened the door and looked into the darkness. "When did they leave?" he said, looking back to the others, who were equally puzzled. "I didn't hear them leave," Karen said, coming to the doorway to look out.

"A couple of strange ones. Are you sure you want to go to the Middle East on their information, Jake?" She said.

"We have to," Wilson put in. "There's really no alternative. I, of course, still can't accept all this nonsense about the Church Age ending and bodies being transformed into heavenly beings and that sort of thing. But I believe those fellows know where there's a safe place to sequester ourselves for awhile. INterface has been going berserk trying to find where all those Jews are disappearing to. If we can get that many people fighting with us, and if their hiding out place can provide adequate time for us to plan and build our forces, maybe we can put up formidable opposition to Herr Krimhler and his lot."

"They didn't leave through this door," Jacob said. "The door was bolted on the inside just now, before I opened it."

"One of us must've locked it and not noticed the men were gone," Karen said. "They probably stepped out while we were talking. One of us unthinkingly locked the door after them, and when they couldn't get back in, they probably went back to their quarters."

They watched the rain begin to fall, rain which burned the skin where it touched the body if allowed to remain for more than several seconds. Rain that caused a sickly greenish halo to form around each of the telephone pole night-lamps surrounding the compound.