America was finished. The Great Satan was being consumed by fire. A new world order was emerging. And it was all going according to plan, Al-Hassani realized. He had literally had a dream about these very events when he was a six-year-old boy growing up in the outskirts of Baghdad. He had woken up in a cold sweat, terrified by all that he had seen and heard — terrified, yet strangely comforted as well. He had had the same stunningly vivid dream two more times over the years — once days before he had been released from prison and once just before the Day of Devastation. None of it had made any sense at the time. Yet now, incredibly, it was all coming to pass.
Al-Hassani suddenly heard the roar of applause. He blinked hard and realized he had finished introducing Lucente, who was now standing at his side, feigning humility and drinking in the adulation. He gave Lucente a gentle hug — hoping somehow to convey in visual terms to a worldwide audience the “sorrow of a sympathetic nation” of which he had just spoken — and then took his seat.
Lucente cleared his throat, wiped the tears from his eyes, then looked out over a sea of friendly faces and began spouting similar banalities about the Americans and their great losses and how the community of nations must rally together to stand with their brothers and sisters in North America on such a dark day. But after saying all the things Al-Hassani had expected to hear, Lucente said something he had not expected at all.
“On behalf of the entire family of nations that I am honored to represent, I thank you for your heartfelt condolences, I thank your president for his generous offer to rebuild the U.N. headquarters, and I hereby accept.”
Al-Hassani gasped. He glanced at Tariq, standing against the back wall, surveying the crowd. Then he turned from the audience to look up at the secretary-general. Had he heard the man correctly?
“We will count our losses and mourn our dead,” Lucente continued. “But we will not be discouraged. We will not be depressed. We will not be delayed in doing the work for which we have been called. We shall not be overcome with evil but overcome evil with good. We will press on to build a newer and stronger and more unified global community; we will start by building a newer, and stronger, and more glorious United Nations headquarters, and we will do so here in Babylon, this glorious symbol of the death and resurrection of a great and glorious city, state, and spirit.”
43
Dark clouds were gathering overhead.
The winds were shifting. They were coming from the west now, from the Mediterranean, not the desert. A rare summer storm was brewing. Bennett just hoped it wouldn’t slow down their journey.
A storm was building inside him as well. He was grateful, of course, that Erin’s medical problems were only temporary, not life threatening, and even more so that he and the woman he loved so dearly were expecting their first child. He was grateful, too, for Prime Minister Doron’s friendship and moved by how the Israeli leader, unbeknownst to him, had been looking out for his safety and Erin’s nearly since the day they had arrived in Jordan.
At the same time, he was devastated by the unspeakable horrors unfolding back home, by the rapidly mounting death toll in the U.S., by the loss of his dearest friends — the MacPhersons, Ken Costello, and Bob Corsetti chief among them — by his inability to track down and talk to his mom, and by the steadily intensifying fear that more attacks were coming soon if this plan he’d concocted with Secretary Trainor didn’t work.
What’s more, Bennett felt sick to his stomach at the thought that untold millions of Americans who had died in the attacks might not be in a better place. The MacPhersons had been strong believers. He’d get to see them again. But so far as he knew, many of his closest friends had never gotten right with God. Ken Costello, for example, had been perhaps his closest friend in government. Yet to the best of his knowledge, Costello had never made the decision to accept Jesus Christ as his personal Savior and Lord, unless he’d done so since his last e-mail ten days earlier, which Bennett highly doubted.
Bennett had shared the gospel with him countless times. He had pleaded with Costello to examine the evidence of Jesus’ miracles, His death, and His resurrection. He had implored his colleague to consider the fact that they were watching with their own eyes the literal, dramatic fulfillment of major End Times prophecies — the rebirth of Israel, the War of Gog and Magog, the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, the rise of Babylon — and to realize that their time on this planet was very, very short.
Costello had been fascinated by all the End Times prophecies in the Scriptures. He and his wife, Tracy — both long-time agnostics and self-described lapsed Catholics — had studied them carefully and had long talks with Dr. Mordechai about them before he’d been murdered. They had admitted being fascinated with Mordechai’s “theory,” as they put it, but they weren’t yet convinced by his conclusions. They’d begun attending a Bible church in Bethesda, Maryland, a few months before their twins were born.
Tracy had seemed the most open to spiritual things, but it was Ken who asked Bennett on more than one occasion, “How much time do we have left?” Bennett admitted he had no idea. Jesus, he had explained to Costello, had refused to throw the game. When asked by the disciples in Matthew 24 about what to look for, Jesus had explained the general signs that would foreshadow His return: wars, rumors of wars, revolutions, earthquakes, persecution, the spread of the gospel to every nation on earth. But He had refused to tell His disciples the exact time He was coming back to them.
“But of that day and hour no one knows,” Jesus told His closest followers, “not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be. Then there will be two men in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one will be left. Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming.”
Bennett had all but begged Costello to be ready, to realize that the signs were in place, that time was running out. He had urged Costello to get on his knees and ask Christ to come into his heart and forgive him his sins and give him a new life. But Costello kept hemming and hawing and saying he wasn’t quite ready. And now it was too late.
Bennett could not bear the thought of where his friend was now.
“Jonathan? Can you hear me? Hello?”
Bennett realized Doron was still on the line. He felt embarrassed. How long had he zoned out on the prime minister? Bennett suddenly noticed the temperature was dropping and the winds were picking up strength. He quickly apologized and tried to refocus.
“Where are you now?” Doron asked.
Bennett realized he didn’t know. “Good question, sir; one moment.” He turned to Dr. Kwamee. “Where are we?”
“Jerash,” came the reply.