Chase Baker and the Seventh Seal (A Chase Baker Thriller Book 9) (20 page)

“Bring them to Megiddo,” Vanessa insists from atop of her horse. “Let them be witnesses to the final day and the birth of the tortured souls.”

Mahdi now turns to his soldiers.

“The bag,” he says.

Three soldiers jump down from the back of a pickup, approach me on foot. They slap the .45 out of my hand, pull the bag from my shoulders, then knock me to the ground. Looking up from down on my belly, I see maybe a dozen soldiers apprehending Moshe and Itze along with the Orthodox girls. They also grab hold of James. He struggles, but the resistance is useless. They are too strong, and there are too many of them.

I’m forced up off the ground, carted to one of the deuce-and-a-half trucks parked on the perimeter. We are all handcuffed with plastic ties and forced into the back of the truck. Two armed Soldiers of the Army of the Expected One are stationed in the back of the truck with us so that we don’t decide to jump out as soon as we start moving.

It’s still dark out, but, by the looks of it, the dawn of the apocalypse has finally arrived.

As the sun begins to reveal itself on the eastern horizon, we head north along the eastern border of the West Bank and up into the fertile Jezreel Valley. We remain quiet during much of the drive while the ever vigilant soldiers’ eyes never stop scanning us. It’s as if they don’t even need to blink.

Moshe is in pain, his face pale from blood loss. He needed a proper hospital hours ago. The longer he goes without medical treatment, the better the chance he has of losing his leg. The girls keep their heads down, chin against chest, trying their best not to make eye contact with the soldiers. To them, the soldiers’ gaze will be evil. Unclean. Unholy.

Itzy keeps his eyes poised on his Hasidic partner, or should I say, brother. The pain Moshe is experiencing isn’t lost on Itzy. That much is plainly apparent to me.

James sits directly across from me.

That’s the soldier’s first mistake.

Their second mistake is keeping us alive.

I stare at James, hoping he’ll feel my gaze. For now, anyway, he’s got his head down, the brim of his worn outback hat shielding his eyes. But like anyone who’s survived more than their fair share of attacks, he eventually senses my stare, looks up and into my eyes.

I roll my eyes counterclockwise as if indicating the obvious: We must find a way to take out the soldiers. But James makes his eyes wide, and gives his head the subtlest of shakes as if it’s not he who is making his head move, but the vibrations of the truck moving on the uneven road beneath us.

His meaning comes through loud and clear. We don’t risk jumping the guards now. Not while they have their weapons poised at us and our arms tied behind out backs. Not when there are two young women whose lives are at risk, plus one man who is already on the verge of death. Not when Mahdi himself has taken Magda — James’s Goddaughter — hostage.

Not yet, anyway. Because, included in the subtle shake of James’s head is an ever so slight corner-of-the-mouth grin.               

The grin tells me this: Soon, the sons of bitches who wish to bring darkness to all humanity by severing the seventh seal will get their sorry asses kicked. And James and me will be doing the bulk of the ass kicking.

CHAPTER 37

Maybe an hour passes before the truck stops and the soldiers rise, point their weapons at us, and demand we exit the vehicle. When I attempt to assist Moshe down off the tailgate that must be at least four feet above the solid ground, the soldier on my left shoves the butt of his rifle into my back, and I go sailing. With my wrists bound behind my back, I land hard on my chest and belly, and for a full minute, the air is knocked out of me.

You bastards, I will get you for this . . .

We are escorted across a vast plain of green grass surrounded by Date trees and small foothills off in the distance. I know this place. It’s the place from my dreams. The Megiddo Valley where Armageddon is supposed to take place. That is, according to the Bible, both New and Old Testaments. But, if my memory of the texts proves me correct, scripture says nothing of the fall of mankind occurring on behalf of a power hungry madman who wishes to call up Satan in order to breach the seventh seal.

Maybe the world doesn’t end with a whimper after all. But, instead, the collective scream that will surely occur from the voices of billions of innocent men, women, and children should that seal break.

An army of maybe five soldiers stands in formation beside their vehicles and fighting equipment to my right-hand side while, to my direct left, stands James, and beside him, the two Orthodox girls and Moshe, who is leaning on Itzy for support, his naked, injured leg resembling raw hamburger.

Standing in the center of the massive field, Mahdi.

He’s got my black bag which contains the seven codices wrapped around his shoulders while Magda kneels on the grassy floor before him. I have no doubt that she is about to be offered up as a sacrifice. Thus far, anyway, Vanessa and her pale horse are nowhere to be seen. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t somehow present.

A plane appears on the horizon.

What looks from my vantage point like a twin-engine Cessna. The plane circles the field, losing altitude with each circle. When it’s low enough, it finally puts down at the end of the field and taxis its way towards the center where Mahdi is standing before the kneeling Magda.

When the passenger side door opens, a man gets out. Even from a distance of one hundred meters, I can see that it’s a young man, just by the way he walks and the swagger he displays while doing it. The closer he comes towards Mahdi, I can tell he’s wearing skinny jeans and a blue on white T-shirt that’s got “Feel the Bern” on it from the now defunct 2016 Bernie Sanders for President campaign. His hair is thick, dark, and his face scruffy.

He is my employer.

Cross.

He eyes me.

“Chase man!” he barks, “How the hell’s it hangin’, yo?”

He jogs the rest of the distance that separates the two of us, and when he’s finally in front of me, he holds out his fist.

“Give me the rock, bro,” he says. “You’ve done a man’s job.”

I’m feeling the Bern all right. Feeling it kindling at the tips of my toes and taking on fuel as it makes its way up my veins and finally flashes inside my overheated brain.

“When I finally get my hands free, Cross,” I say, “I’m gonna give you a rock like you’ve never felt before. In fact, I might kick you in the balls right now. They’re certainly big enough. I can’t miss.”

He lowers his fisted hand.

“Oh yeah,” he says, that smile still occupying his face, “you’re a little tied up at the moment.”

“That your employer?” James inquired.

“I know how to pick ‘em, don’t I, James?”

“He know he’s gonna die soon?”

Now I’m smiling. “I doubt it. He’s a video game player. You know, when you die it’s ‘game over,’ but then you pop in a coin and play again like you never died in the first place.”

“Millennials,” James adds. “Fucking up the world one text at a time.”

“Oh, come on, Chase,” Cross says, slapping me on the shoulder. “This is just another day for you. Fighting the bad guys in an exotic locale. Getting all bad ass toxic masculine. I bet you’ve even gotten the girl already. Where is she?” he turns, spots Magda on her knees, not looking any too happy, despite the way the breeze coming off the hills blows her thick dark hair over one side of her face. “There she is. Lucky you, Chase man. What a life the Renaissance man leads. That’s why I hired you in the first place.”

“Because of you, one of my men is shot and needs a doctor right now, or he’ll lose his leg. And another man is dead, the victim of a rare spider that’s almost as big as your mouth.”

Cross loses his smile, feigns sadness.

“Well, you know, Moshe here was never your man to begin with. He works for me, and I sent him along so that you wouldn’t steal the codices for yourself or hand them over to a museum or something. And second, I have no idea who the man is who got killed by a big spider. But that sounds crazy freaky bad, yo.”

“Yeah,” I say. “It was bad. You should have been there.”

“Well, listen, Chase man,” he goes on. “If it’s any consolation, you’re about to witness one of the coolest fucking shows ever to be played on planet earth. I’m here not only to take possession of my antique books but to take background and base shots for a new interactive, virtual reality video game. A game I’m going to call Armageddon One because, well, it’s going to be the real Armageddon and it don’t get no more real than that, yo.” He turns toward the plane. I see two men setting up digital filming equipment while a third man is already taking shots of Mahdi, Magda, the soldiers, and the location. “You see, Chase, it ain’t enough to make a video game that only seems real. You need a video game that
is
real, dude. And Armageddon One is going to be so bad ass fucking real, it will really feel like the end of the world is happening inside your headset, yo.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something, Cross?” I say.

“Let’s hear it man. Free country . . . errrr . . . well, sort of.”

“If you usher in Armageddon One, there won’t be an Armageddon Two.”

He comes up to me, his mouth only inches from my ear.

He says, “Umm, yo, Chase man, you don’t really believe in all this superstitious hocus pocus, man. Personally, I think this dude, Mahdi, and his Army of the Expected Dopes, are crazy nut balls. Like Jim Jones and company on steroids. But he wasn’t in possession of the metal books and the all-important seventh seal. So, we sort of needed to play the game. You dig? I mean, just look at those soldiers. All dressed in black. Hair done up Mohawk punk. Real guns and real bullets. It don’t get no more real. Plus, all these theatrics gonna look killer.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I dig . . . killer. So, now what?”

He takes a step back, regrows that stupid ass grin.

“We have some fun,” he says.

Now, coming from the direction of the parked airplane, Vanessa, riding her pale horse.

With the cameras filming her like she’s acting out a scripted scene from a new Hollywood blockbuster, she rides up to Mahdi, who bows obediently before her. Leaning as far down as she possibly can without falling out of her saddle, she runs a hand through Magda’s hair. Then, straightening up, she gallops over to Cross.

“It’s time,” she says. She nods at me, her lips pressed together. She winks. Then, turning her horse around, she once more gallops back towards Mahdi. She shouts, “Break the Seventh Seal!”

All cameras are poised on her, Mahdi, and Magda.

“This is gonna be so bad ass, yo, I’m gonna piss my pants,” Cross says, now holding his smartphone in his hand while he snaps one still shot after the other. “Gonna get this up on Instagram and Snapchat like pronto, yo.”

Mahdi reaches into the black bag, comes back out with the seventh codice which he holds reverently up to the blue sky. That’s when thick black clouds begin to form and what was once a beautiful morning sun is now entirely blocked out like the end of days are truly upon us.