I, Judas the 5th Gospel (25 page)

Pierce was going through a pile of messages that awaited him, and he didn’t want them to focus on the Final Option. “One of the Brotherhood’s team is dead. My agent.”

Brunswick frowned. “How do you know he’s dead if he was your agent?”

Pierce didn’t answer, turning another page and looking at an intelligence flimsy. “Task Force Kali will be going wheels-up soon. The President is going to have to make a go/no go decision when the aircraft reach the Afghan-Pakistan border in a little over an hour.”

Brunswick slapped the tabletop. “Damn fools!”

“The Pakistanis know the Indians haven’t loaded the US nukes on the missiles. The natural conclusion is that the Indians are going to use those nukes on the border.”

“At least they’re still firing the rockets, even if they are using their own nukes,” Thornton said.

“You know,” Pierce said as he dropped the flimsy onto the table, “even if this plan works and we divert the Intruder, there might not be much of the planet left to save.”

Abbottabad, Pakistan

The message was received using the most advanced and sophisticated communications technology the United States Military possessed. Scrambled, frequency hopped, bounced through a satellite, and unscrambled. And the five letter groupings still made no sense:

WLSON HRZAQ WOSLR KDWIW

QNDTM MAEOY WQAWP HTISM

RHMWL PALTM THRML HRNWL

ZXSTY PIWER

It was going to be decoded by Captain Martinez the old-fashioned way: using a one-time pad and a trigraph. The trigraph linked all the letters in the alphabet in three-letter combinations. An experienced Special Forces commo man had the trigraph memorized; Martinez still had to use the acetate trigraph he’d first received two years ago in the Special Forces Qualification Course at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

The key component in the decoding, and what made this system unbreakable, was the middle letter of the three-letter grouping. This came from a one-time pad. A one-time pad consisted of letters randomly generated by a computer in five-letter groupings. Each page of the pad equaled each message received or sent. A duplicate of the one-time pad that Martinez carried was at Task Force Kali’s headquarters. Without the matching pad, it would be impossible to decode the message.

Martinez matched the original message letter with the one-time pad letter to come up with a third letter. The message was the one he’d been dreading:

TASKF ORCEK ALIAG OREPE ATGOE TABOR DERCR OSSING INSEV ENSIX MINUT ESINI TIATE CLOCK ATMES SAGET RANSM ISSIO NDATE TIMES TAMPG ODSPE EDXXX

His mind, used to seeing the groupings, quickly separated out the words:

TASK FORCE KALI A GO REPEAT GO ETA BORDER CROSSING IN SEVEN SIX MINUTES INITIATE CLOCK AT MESSAGE TRANSMISSION DATE TIME STAMP GOD SPEED XXX

Martinez fingered the cross around his neck and said a quick prayer. His chest and back were covered with eight tattooed names. One for each man he’d served with over the years, first in the Infantry and then in Special Forces, who’d all made the ultimate sacrifice.

He glanced over at the other occupant of the hide hole. Sergeant First Class Daw was asleep, as much as one could be asleep in a six by four by five-foot deep hole, crowded with all their gear, weapons, food and water. And body waste, solids in plastic baggies and urine disposed in a catch-hole, in the bottom on the downslope side.

The hole was on the side of a steep eight thousand foot high peak, about five hundred feet from the very top. The first team here had choppered in at night in 2002 and disembarked on the opposite slope and climbed over the mountain and begun work on the hole. Working only at night, it took three weeks to dig, with the men climbing back over the mountain before dawn to hide every morning.

Covered with camouflage, protected by thermal wrapping from heat sensors, the hole had been occupied every single second since it was completed. The two-man recon teams did nine-day stints. They were extracted after a new team took their place. Martinez and Daw had been there for five days.

Martinez knew the drill. They’d rehearsed it over a hundred times back at Kandahar. Six beacons were emplaced on the mountain below, leading down to the large, camouflaged tunnel entrance to the nuclear complex, which had been bored into the rock by the Pakistanis. A laser designator with a fresh battery was in a heavy plastic case, ready for use to guide in missiles from Air Force planes if needed. Infrared strobe lights to guide helicopters and parachutists. It was a complicated choreography in an intense timeline that would even give Task Force Kali a chance of securing the facility.

Martinez didn’t initiate the plan.

He’d been in this hole seven times before, always volunteering to go when his team’s rotation came up, taking the place of one of his men. It was on his sixth rotation when he came up with the idea. That was the rotation when those damn SEALs took out Osama, farther below, in that house in town. He’d watched the raid through a telescope, knowing how close it was to compromising Task Force Kali and the hide site. Seeing that, he knew that even the POTUS, the big man himself, having given the go-ahead for Seal Team Six, didn’t know about Kali. Or else he wouldn’t have risked running one Spec Ops mission where another Spec Ops team was sitting on nukes. Obama might have been a high value target, but nukes trumped revenge.

Secrets within secrets.

So Martinez had come up with his own secret plan.

Using the appropriate page in the one-time pad, he quickly encoded a five-word message. He placed it in his breast pocket. He filled his rucksack with the equipment he’d need, being careful not to wake Daw.

He placed the decoded incoming message on top of the laser designator. Daw would see it when he woke up in thirty minutes, when his watch pulsed against his wrist. He could initiate. Because in forty-five minutes, Martinez’s plan would either work, or Kali would work their dark magic and perhaps start World War III.

Then he left the hide hole.

Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan

The first to take off were the helicopters, because they were slower. Little Birds, AH-60s, led the way, followed by MH-47 Chinooks and MH-60 Nighthawks. From other airfields in Afghanistan, HC-130J Combat King refueling aircraft took off, the bladders inside the cargo bays bulging with fuel. They would rendezvous with the helicopters just before the border and refuel the Chinooks and Nighthawks. The Little Birds, four seaters containing pilot, co-pilot, and two Special Forces men, were on one-way missions. They weren’t capable of being refueled, and didn’t have the range to make it to the target and back.

The theory was that the men on board would be exfiltrated by the other choppers.

‘Theory’ being the operative word. Exfiltration, among Special Operations soldiers, always seemed to be the part of the plan that received the least amount of attention from others.

As soon as the rotary wing aircraft were clear, the fixed wing began to take off.

Task Force Kali was airborne.

The Very Large Array, New Mexico

In the control room of the Very Large Array, Abaku was going over the math. It was what he did. Math was perfect, it was factual, and it had definite answers. He was using a handheld calculator, a pencil, and a legal pad.

The Very Large Array was something much different than the single satellite dish he’d used at the Mission. The seven dishes along each of the three arms were maneuverable. While they were primarily used as receivers, they could also broadcast. The mathematical problem now was adjusting his old math to the new math with the new form of transmitting.

“You do not trust my figures on the computer?” Sergut had come up behind him, unnoticed in Abaku’s focus.

“It is not a question of trust, Brother,” Abaku said. “It is a question of being sure.”

“You do not trust computers either?” Sergut pressed.

“For me, and only me, no lack of respect intended,” Abaku replied, “a computer is fraught with becoming lazy and allowing the machine to do some of my thinking. There have been so many mistakes computers have not caught, because the humans entering the information made a mistake. The machine is only as good as the person who is inputting data.”

Sergut nodded. “True. Remember the fools at NASA who entered yards instead of meters for one of their probes?”

“I would have been better prepared if I had been told about—“ Abaku nodded out the window.

“You had to believe that the Mission was our real effort,” Sergut said. “Just as our enemies still believe.”

Abaku shrugged. “It is as the Head wished it to be.”

A phone buzzed, a special line direct to Atlanta. Sergut answered it. He listened for a moment, then held it out. “There is a call for you.”

“This is Abaku.”

“Reverend.”

Abaku knew the voice—he had heard it almost every day for many years now—the Head of the Brotherhood. He waited.

“You were right about Kopec. We found out he contacted the Illuminati shortly after the first test. And last night he sent a message from the base camp to Illuminati headquarters.”

Abaku bowed his head in shame. “I am sorry. It is my fault. I should have—“

“There is no time for apologies,” the Head interrupted.

“Has he compromised the Amazon mission?” Abaku asked.

“I doubt it,” the Head said. “I informed Father DiSalvo about the situation.”

Then Kopec was dead.
Abaku thought ahead. “Kopec never knew of this place. He thought we would complete the Great Commission via the Mission.”
As did I
, he thought but did not say.

“I know,” the Head said. “Now nothing can stand in our way.”

The link went dead.

“Ah, look!” Sergut was pointing up. There was a flash. “The Illuminati are still throwing their science against the will of God!”

Earth

The next wave of American and Russian nuclear warheads went off within five minutes of each other. Those in the northern hemispheres could see the explosions overhead. Those who didn’t have line of sight saw them replayed on televisions, computers, laptops, smartphones and other screens within minutes.

Some cheered, many prayed, but the vast majority were very, very afraid.

The Final Day Terminal Impact= in 1.5 Hours

The Present: The Final Day

From the 5
^th
Gospel: Judas:4:1 And then, the Voice in writing no longer was absolute. Science turned man away from the Word to the laws of nature, even though those laws be made by the Father. Our Fourth Consciousness makes the leap of faith, supported by incomplete knowledge. What is desired of God is: Do This For Me.

And so, He will with the Fifth Gospel.

But men and women will still have to make a choice.

The Mato Grasso Region of the Amazon.

Judas pointed up. “We have an hour and a half until our friend arrives.”

The three followed his finger. The orb loomed just over the horizon, and even as they watched, the sparkle of another nuclear blast occurred.

Judas shook his head. “Sometimes men are at their best under the most dire circumstances; and sometimes the worst part of mankind surfaces.”

Angelique leaned forward. “Tell us!”

Judas arced an eyebrow. “Tell you what?”

“The truth! Is the Rapture coming? Will Jesus come down from the heavens? Will we be saved?”

“Yes, yes, and maybe,” Judas said. “I am trying to prepare you. So you understand. So you can explain it to others.”

“What others?” Gates demanded.

“In due time,” Judas said. “You asked about the Rapture. I began my discussion with you talking about the Bible. The Rapture is a part of that; some say the inevitable conclusion. If you pulled the Book of Revelation out of the Bible and published it as a novel, it might be a bestselling thriller.”

Judas held up the well-worn leather Bible. “This is a very early version of the Bible, which means it’s still over a thousand years out of date. I talked about The Apostles and the writing of the Bible. But who wrote Revelations?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Scholars have debated this for centuries. In fact, in the first iterations, Revelations wasn’t even a part of the Bible. It was jammed in there over the objection of many.”

His eyes got a faraway look. “Oh, to have a ringside seat at those arguments in the generations following Jesus’s ascension. It was all I could do to keep quiet.”

“Why?” Gates asked. “Why did you keep quiet? Why didn’t you tell them the truth since you knew it?”

“I knew my truth, just like you know your truth. THE Truth?” Judas shook his head. “There is no universal truth for humans. I did write a short document, a prologue to the Fifth Gospel.”