Tyndale House - The Mark - The Beast Rules the World

"If I hadn't developed it myself, I wouldn't have believed it. This thing will literally intercept the impulses being relayed from point to point in the processor, carry them to the power source, whether battery or AC, and draw the current into the motherboard itself. If there were an incendiary device in there, I could get a computer to literally blow up in a hacker's face. Given that all that is in there is plastic and metal, the best I can do is produce a lot of heat, smoke, and some melting. Regardless, the victim computer is irreparable after that.

"More later, confrere. I'll look for something concrete from you and Abdullah within forty-eight hours. Meanwhile, it's less obvious and risky for you to have occasion to run into Hannah than for me to. Keep her warm and courageous as a compatriot and assure her that we will get out in time and have productive years left to devote to the cause of the kingdom."

Rayford, who had been kept up-to-date by David once he was up and around again, worried about the calendar. He had been noodling the most effective roles for each member of the Force, and the prospect of a sudden infusion of four members displaced from the palace had both its up- and downsides. Were he to bring them all to Chicago, he would add to the base of operations two pilots, a nurse, and one of the world's greatest computer geniuses. Clearly he had the room, but he wondered if having virtually everybody in one place was the most efficient use of resources.

Not just for their own psyches but also for the sake of the two-pronged overall mission-stymieing Carpathia where possible and winning as many people to the kingdom as they could-it might make more sense to spread the talent around the globe. Hattie and Leah were restless and eager for assignments. Chloe was resigned to staying, because of Kenny and the work of the co-op, but Buck needed live exposure to what was going on to make his cyberzine as effective as it could be.

Rayford and Albie needed all the pilots they could get, but planes weren't plentiful either. If he and the insightful if inarticulate Zeke were right about what Tsion was up to, thousands of pilots and planes would have to be recruited from around the world to airlift Jewish believers to safety. Veteran pilots like Mac and Abdullah could help make that happen.

But in an instant in the middle of the night, Rayford went from thinking he had more than two more weeks to think and plan how to best make use of the New Babylon contingent to realizing he had to act quickly. Time was a luxury he never had enough of, but an emergency threw everything into turmoil.

Rayford's phone rang, but no one was there. He checked the readout. A message from Lukas (Laslos) Miklos. "Have been found out," it read. "Pastor and my wife detained, among others. Pray please. Help please." The underground church in Ptolemai's was the largest in Greece and likely the largest in the United Carpathian States. Up to now the local GC presence had not been a problem. The Greek believers had been careful, Rayford knew from personal experience, but even they feared GC Security and Intelligence sources could not look the other way much longer. Part of the reason they felt they had been ignored was that local GC leadership believed Carpathia wanted the region that bore his name to have the lowest reported incidence of insurgence of the ten global supercommunities.

Whatever public relations sensitivities Carpathia had exhibited before his assassination, since his resurrection his emphasis had been on enforcement. Apparently, Rayford deduced, the new Carpathia would rather eradicate the opposition within his own duchy than pretend it didn't exist. Rayford would ask David to check into the situation and see what would be served by a Trib Force party showing its face over there.

Rayford had known Mrs. Miklos to be a quiet, deeply spiritual woman. But Laslos had told him she was also opinionated, stubborn, and brave. She was not the type to back down if confronted over the exercise of her beliefs by those in authority. Rayford imagined the GC storming a meeting and Mrs. Miklos resisting and even putting up a fuss rather than allowing her pastor, Demetrius Demeter, to be taken into custody.

But Rayford didn't want his imagination to run away with him. He would find out what he could from David and perhaps take a run over there with Albie. Or perhaps with Buck. He hated the idea of leaving the Trib Force without so much as a helicopter pilot.

David was keying in his coordinates to listen to Carpathia's meeting with Hickman and the others when he got a call from Rayford regarding a GC vs. underground church skirmish in Greece. "I'll let you know what I find out," he told Rayford. David phoned Walter Moon, but before Walter answered, David was surprised to be paged to Hickman's office.

His office? Hickman shared space with Carpathia's assistant. And didn't Hickman have a meeting with Carpathia soon? David hung up and called Hickman. The assistant, Sandra, answered. "Hassid here. Was I just paged?"

"Yes, sir. The Supreme Commander would like you to meet with him in the conference room, eighteenth floor."

David found a mess. Though the workday was moments from being over and Sandra was packing up to leave, workmen still jammed the area. Drills, saws, hammers, dust, scaffolds, ladders, materials everywhere.

"They're not going to relocate you while they're working?" David said.

"Apparently not," Sandra said, and she marched off.

Hickman opened the door to a conference room that was not long for this world and waved David in. "Hurry and let me get this door closed, Hassid. Less sawdust."

The new Supreme Commander, a Western version of Fortunato with even less class, offered a fleshy hand and shook David's enthusiastically. "Yeah, hey, how ya doin'? He is risen, huh?"

"Huh," David said, and when Hickman shot him a double take, he added, "Indeed."

Hickman appeared nervous and in a hurry. David thought he could pry information from him by playing dumb. "So, just about the end of your day, hmm? How's it been, sharing space with-"

"Never mind that," Hickman said, sitting and letting his generous belly push past his unbuttoned uniform jacket. "Got a meeting coming up with the big guys, and I'd rather not go in there unprepared."

That'll be the day, David thought. "How can I help?" he said.

"We all up-to-date, up to snuff, on track, on target, on course?"

David shook his head, amazed. "All of the above, I guess. What are we talking about?"

Hickman grabbed a dog-eared pad and riffled through a couple of pages. "Guillotines, syringes?"

"You mean loyalty enforcement facilitators and biochip injectors?"

"Yeah, thanks!" Hickman said, scribbling. "I knew Viv had some special names for those. You know, Hassid, basically I was a cop. I'm honored and everything, but I gotta prove to His Majesty, ah, His Excellency, that I can handle this. That I'm not in over my head."

"You feel you are?"

"What I feel is that my loyalty and my devotion to the potentate will make up for any lack of experience I've had at this level of management. Now where are we on these things? What can I tell him?"

"That we're on track, on pace."

"Good. I can count on you then."

"Oh, can you ever, J-, er, Supreme Commander."

"Ah, you can call me Commander when it's just you and me. Keep it formal in public, of course."

"Of course."

"By the way, do you purchase livestock too?"

"You mean foodstuffs? No, that would be Food Services."

"No, this is live. I don't need food. I need a live animal."

"Still not my area, I'm afraid. Rolling stock, avionics, computers, communications hardware. That's my game."

"Who's going to help me procure a pig?"

"A pig, sir?"

"Huge and live, Hassid."

"I have no idea."