Apocalypse Dawn (61 page)

United States of America

The Pentagon, Washington D.C.

Local Time 6:42 P.M.

Delroy Harte sat outside General David Marsden’s office and felt the enormity of the mission he’d agreed to carry out for Captain Falkirk.

The fact that the Pentagon was up and running at nearly seven o’clock in the evening when it normally shut down at three-thirty in the afternoon was a prime indicator of how bad things were in the United States. Luckily, the trip in had prepared him for it. Abandoned and wrecked cars surrounded Dulles International. Bulldozers were still at work scraping smashed planes and jets away to free up more runways as the nation slowly reclaimed the air. This time, though, Delroy was certain people would be even less likely to trust air travel.

At 1:21 A.M., when the disappearances had taken place, there hadn’t been many flights in the air above Washington, but a hefty assortment of the ones that had been in a holding pattern above, taking off from, or landing at Dulles had come down spectacularly all around the city. The falling passenger jets at the airport had taken out hangars and other jets being serviced and fueled. According to the local news reports, fires had burned at the airport most of the night because emergency services had been even harder hit by the mysterious personnel depletion than the mean averages in the population as a whole so far indicated.

The Pentagon halls stayed busy, and while he waited, Delroy watched the people hustle through. Many messages were still being carried by hand throughout the building because not all of the phone lines were operational again. According to a pamphlet Delroy had found in the seat he’d been shown to by the young Marine lance corporal who had been assigned to him upon his entrance to the heavily secured building, the Pentagon had over one hundred thousand miles of phone lines. He had no idea how many miles weren’t working.

Thinking about phone lines made Delroy think again of calling his wife. Or ex-wife, as the case might be. She would have gotten in touch with him if she were going to end their marriage. Then again, he had stopped returning her calls and letters a long time ago. She didn’t owe him much courtesy after everything he hadn’t done, everything he hadn’t said, everything he hadn’t listened to her say.

Delroy held his hat in his hands. He was jet-lagged and wom. And empty, he thought bitterly. The nightmare-he’d almost convinced himself that was what it had been even though he could still feel the man’s scaly hand pressed against his face-had beaten down most of whatever belief he had saved up while aboard Wasp. He thought about the way he had faced Donaldson while the Marine colonel had pressed his sidearm into his face. He had been so arrogant, so sure of himself. He didn’t feel that way now.

Delroy rubbed at his face. He’d shaved with the toiletries he’d been provided after landing, and he’d put on a fresh uniform that Falkirk had requisitioned. It fit him like it had been made for him. As tall as he was, he’d always had to have his pants altered. While he’d been living at home, his wife had taken care of that. The last few years he’d had the ship launderer take care of it for him.

He glanced up at the two young Marines standing outside General Marsden’s door. “I’m going to stretch my legs. I’ve been on a plane for the last fourteen and a half hours.”

“Yes, sir,” the lance corporal replied. “Please remain within our sight, Chaplain. If you’re found in the building without an escort, you’ll be locked down.”

Delroy nodded. “I’m not going far. Just to the window there and back.” He walked slowly, missing the feel of Wasp’s deck under his feet. He wished he were there now. Then he felt guilty for that wish because he knew it was only because he wanted to crawl into a hole and lick his wounds.

He stood at the window and looked out. Darkness had fallen over the city. Evening still fell early in March. But the night was held at bay by the lights around the city. Searchlights strobed the sky and the light pollution washed away the stars.

Frantic voices whispered up and down the hallways. The pamphlet also said that the corridors measured seventeen and one-half miles long. Yet the farthest distance between any two places in the five-sided building could be easily walked in seven minutes.

The pamphlet was a font of information.

And what do you know? Delroy examined his reflection in the dark glass of the window. The crisp white uniform stood out sharply in the glass and looked like it held a bluish tint. His face, though, was another matter. How had he gotten so old, so worn and used up? He’d never seen that kind of age in his father’s face. He had outlived his father, and he had outlived his son.

But it’s not just the age, is it, Delroy? You never saw your father this old, but you also never saw him this false. Or this scared.

Fear ached within him, resonating through all six feet, six inches of his frame. He had never been so afraid. What had that nightmare aboard the Skytrain done? Had the nonexistent lieutenant been a figment of his own doubts, a result of the stress he was under, or a mental disorder that was only now manifesting itself?

Confronting Colonel Donaldson aboard Wasp wasn’t the act of a sane man. No wonder the Marine colonel had been afraid. He wasn’t afraid of God’s wrath or the Antichrist; Donaldson had been afraid of a madman.

“Go home, Chaplain.” The rough voice echoed in Delroy’s head. “Go home and live in misery the way you have for the last five years. “

The words beat into Delroy, ringing against the immense emptiness he felt inside himself. He wanted out of there. Truly, he did. Falkirk was wrong: he wasn’t the man for the job. He was just a deluded fool searching for some kind of meaning over the death of his son.

“Chaplain Harte.”

At first, Delroy thought he was hearing the man’s words again. Then he spotted the young Marine’s reflection moving toward him in the window. He turned toward the Marine.

“Chaplain Harte,” the Marine said. “General Marsden will see you now, sir.”

“Thank you, Lance Corporal.”

Delroy stepped into the general’s spacious office and was escorted back to a conference room in the rear.

General Marsden wasn’t the only general in the room. Two other men wore stars on their shoulders. All three of them sat at one end of the long conference table.

Coming to erect attention, Delroy fired off a salute at General Marsden. “General Marsden, sir. Navy Chaplain Delroy Harte of USS Wasp.”

Marsden was in his late fifties. He had iron-gray hair and quick gray wolfs eyes. He was tall and solid, a big man with a jaw like a 1950s Buick bumper. He returned the salute. “At ease, Chaplain Harte.”

“Thank you, sir.” Delroy immediately took his hat off, tucked it under his arm, and spread his feet to assume parade rest.

“I’d like to present Generals Todd Cranston and Hubert Mayweather. They are also members of the joint chiefs.”

“A pleasure, sirs,” Delroy said.

Todd Cranston looked like he was in his late thirties. Cranston had made a name for himself during the latest rash of Middle Eastern conflicts and had turned out to be a media darling. He was also a war hawk with a particular axe to grind regarding Russia. He was blond and rugged-looking. There was talk of a political career once he decided to step away from the military.

“Chaplain Harte,” Cranston said.

Hubert Mayweather was older than Marsden, just starting to go to seed. But he remained attentive and had an undercurrent of menace that clung to him. His hair was light brown but gray at the temples. He nodded.

“General Cranston and General Mayweather will be assisting me with this matter this evening,” Marsden said, “lending an ear and advice as I need it.”

“Aye, sir,” Delroy replied.

“You may sit, Chaplain.”

“Thank you, sir.” Delroy placed his hat on the table and sat a little uncomfortably at the other end of the conference table. The lines had been drawn on the battlefield. The chairs weren’t designed for a man six and a half feet tall. He put his hands on the table, the left folded over the right. He tried not to show the tension he felt.

The two young Marines stood at the wall behind him.

Marsden flicked a glance at the Marines. “You’ll excuse the extra manpower in the room, Chaplain. Things are, at best, chaotic at this time.”

“1 understand, sir.”

“Captain Falkirk called in a big favor to get you an audience with me at this time, Chaplain.”

“Aye, sir. Captain Falkirk wanted me to extend his appreciation, sir. Thank you for seeing me.”

Marsden opened a manila folder in front of him. “This is a document Captain Falkirk e-mailed to me.” He flipped through pages. “It’s a summation of the events aboard Wasp and on the ground near the TurkishSyrian border. After reading the captain’s report, I can see that you would appreciate our situation here.”

“Aye, sir.”

“You lost men aboard Wasp?” Cranston asked.

“Aye, sir. And we lost Marines out in the field near the TurkishSyrian border, sir.”

“Soldiers that just vanished?” Cranston asked.

“Aye, sir. And crewmen.”

Cranston pointed at the file Marsden had. “And there’s nothing in that file that relates anything you might have seen or heard at the time of the disappearances?”

Delroy had read the file during the flight. It was a straight-ahead no-nonsense account of the crashed aircraft and the crewmen missing aboard Wasp. “No, sir.”

“But you’re here in regards to those unexplained disappearances?”

“That’s correct, sir.”

Marsden looked at Delroy. “According to what I understood from Captain Falkirk’s rather cryptic message, you think you have an explanation for those disappearances.”

Delroy hesitated. hadn’t Falkirk admitted he had the same theory? Maybe the captain wouldn’t have wanted to transmit such a message. Or maybe he didn’t want to stick his neck out. Guilt rattled through Delroy over that one. Even if Falkirk hadn’t mentioned that he believed what Delroy had come to say, the captain had stuck his neck out all the same by making certain his chaplain got there to say it.

“Aye, sir. But it’s not just an explanation, sir. I believe I have the answer, sir.”

Cranston’s eyes narrowed. “Chaplain, I have to admit that I have a hard time believing that you have the answer. We’ve been talking to NASA scientists, military think tanks, and gentlemen in the National Security Agency about a number of possibilities that could have caused the mass disappearances around the world. If you can come up with an answer they haven’t thought of… well, sir, then my hat’s off to you.”

Delroy took a sip of breath, feeling as though the room had suddenly constricted on him. He wanted to believe, truly he did. But the image of Terry’s casket, the unconscionable grave at Marbury, Alabama, in the family plot where Josiah Harte rested, ran through his mind. It had been raining the day they had laid his son to rest.

“The people who disappeared,” he said in a quiet voice, “were Raptured.” He wanted to continue, to pour passion into his words, but he couldn’t. His throat seemed to dry up and the words just stopped.

Cranston regarded Delroy with a flat gaze. “Raptured?”

“Aye, sir.”

“Do you want to explain that term, Chaplain?”

Delroy started to speak and couldn’t get the words out for a moment. He cleared his throat and tried again. “They were taken by God, sir.”

“Taken by God.” Cranston’s disbelief was obvious in the hollow tone of his voice, his words driving home like nails in a coffin. He unsheathed the steel of authority when he spoke again. “Did I hear you right, Chaplain?”

“Aye, sir.” Delroy sat quietly, aware of how his heart thudded inside his chest.

Cranston glanced down at the legal pad in front of him. “Chaplain Harte, you flew practically nonstop from the Mediterranean, from a ship that is involved in a major military engagement, to bring us that story?”

Delroy had to force his voice out. “Aye, sir.”

“And you told your captain this?”

“I did, sir.”

Cranston turned to Marsden. “Do you know Captain Falkirk, David?”

Marsden kept staring at Delroy. “Yes. I do. I consider him a very good and very valuable friend.”

Cranston shook his head. “Then I must admit, General, that I am confused. I know you must trust him and his judgment, otherwise you would never have wasted my time by calling me here.”

“I do trust his judgment,” Marsden said. “Captain Falkirk speaks highly of Chaplain Harte. The chaplain has had a long and distinguished career with the Navy.”

The words crashed into Delroy’s mind. For the first time he realized his career was at stake today. And he had brought them the story of the Rapture, something that he had no way of proving. Perspiration poured down his face despite the room’s cool temperature. Had he ever truly believed that? And why?

The mocking voice from the plane tore into his thoughts and wrecked his concentration. “Because a lot of people turned up missing sixteen-plus hours ago and you don’t have an answer? Oh, man, if you can’t explain it, if things don’t go the way you want them to, it must be God. Are ignorance and fear and a need for some kind of immortality what it takes to make you a believer, Chaplain Harte?”

Cranston drew lines on the legal pad. “Not to be disrespectful, General, but maybe this should have been a navy matter.”

Marsden spoke in a flat voice but didn’t take his eyes from Delroy. “General, as you’ll recall, Admiral Royce is among the missing. In this matter, I didn’t want a standin. I wanted us.”

Cranston looked at Marsden, then at Mayweather. “Why us?”

“Because we represent a major bloc within the joint chiefs, General,” Mayweather said in his honey-soft voice. “When the three of us speak together on something, people listen.”

“We don’t agree on a lot of things,” Cranston said. “The case in point is the situation we need to take regarding Russia.”

“We don’t know that Russia is behind the attacks that eliminated so much of our population,” Marsden said.

“That’s bull,” Cranston said. “It can’t be anyone else. No one else has the technology.”

“You know,” Mayweather said in a patient father’s voice, “that’s what Russia is saying about us. That we must be behind the disappearances.”