“I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.”
Revelation 6:2
After leaving the Rexall Grill, Jeff Ross, Chad Myers and Bill Briggs headed to Park Place Café, Bill’s favorite Dunwoody hangout. Actually it was his favorite hangout in the Atlanta area, more ladies per square foot than anywhere he had ever been, and most were pretty nice ladies. They didn’t seem to hate men like so many women these days. Of course, having a couple of husbands who fooled around on you would tend to make a woman hate men, he guessed.
Not really a café, other than having to sell food in order to serve alcohol and obey the silly laws pertaining to such, Park Place was a small bar with piano, upon which some of Atlanta’s prettiest ladies danced the night away after a few adult beverages. Bill liked that.
The décor was semi-elegant, dark leather with gold trim, mirrors everywhere that made Park Place look much larger than reality. The lighting was just right, and everyone look good in the dimness. The place was classy enough to have an assistant in the men’s room, just in case Bill got too drunk to wash his own hands he guessed. Bill did not like that. Leave me alone for Pete’s sake! I just want to pee and wash my hands. I don’t need any cologne.
Atlanta was a babe magnet, Bill recognizing that delight right away, and some of the best babes visited Park Place. Bill wasn’t really shy by any means, but he hated humiliation. The problem with most bars, in Europe too, was transition. Men hated bars that had dead-end spaces. Once a guy got to the end of the bar, scouting out potential wives, at least for the night, he then had to turn around, walk right by the girls he just passed; and they knew he didn’t get lucky on that go around. It was embarrassing, humiliating.
Park Place Café solved that problem with a circular bar right in the middle of the place. There was a smooth flow, transition. Bill could walk in, circle the bar and leave if there were no interesting prospects; but there were always interesting prospects at Park Place, a sure bet, at least during operating hours. He visited every time he came through Atlanta.
There would be no circling of the bar tonight. Important things needed to be discussed. The three walked in and took a seat well away from the piano. Jeff ordered a Duckhorn merlot, Chad ordered a Diet Coke and Bill had a White Zinfandel, of course.
“So tell me about this blip of light you mentioned.” Chad referred to the conversation when Jeff called him at Goddard the day before. Boy, it seems like a lot longer he thought.
Jeff explained to Chad and Bill, telling them what he saw, and then didn’t see, a few weeks earlier, a flashcube bright light high in the night sky. The light had reminded Jeff of something, he just couldn’t place it. He was disappointed when neither had heard anything about it, because if anyone had heard, it would have been these two.
“What about The Admiral? Did he mention anything?” Jeff knew that Admiral McLemore’s keen interest in astronomy matched or even surpassed his own.
“He didn’t mention it, but then I didn’t really mention it to him. I would think, if there was an astronomical event of this magnitude, someone would have reported it. How much Duckhorn did you drink that night?” Chad knew that Jeff never over drank, too much of a health nut; and then of course, there were those DUI laws.
Jeff thanked the waitress, thinking she must be new, for bringing the drinks and asked where Abe the Bartender was.
“He’s off tonight but’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll tell him you really missed him,” she said with a wink and a flip of her blonde ponytail. Jeff again wondered who she was. He hadn’t seen her before that he could recall, but she was vaguely familiar.
Jeff did miss Abe, his most favorite bartender and the smartest man he knew about many things. Abe was the kind of bartender you see in the movies, the ones who can talk about anything. Since his divorce, Jeff and Abe had solved many of the world’s problems as Jeff healed from the emotional wounds of his loss. Abe was a great counselor.
“I’ll tell you what I did see though.” Chad looked around, the keyboardist playing Ride Sally Ride, a brunette beauty dancing on the piano, wearing a little-bitty short, black dress and dark red high heels. The three men knew to guard their conversations, a lot of it not for the ears of the innocent and easily confused public.
“There has been a lot to see in just the past week.” Chad continued, “There is an object, a space object, headed our way. We just found it, and we’re not sure why we just found it. It’s humongous. Arecibo should have picked this thing up five years ago.”
“How big? How far?” Bill’s question was brief and to the point, he was that kind of guy.
“That’s the screwy part, we can’t tell at this point. It is not radar-reflective, possibly covered with graphite to absorb rather than reflect. We’ve lost it three times but picked it back up a few minutes later. It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.” Chad Myers had seen a lot of strange things in the field of Near-Earth Objects, NEO’s for short.
“Maybe that’s my blip,” Jeff said with slight hope in his tone. “Nope, there is absolutely no light output or reflection. It’s very strange indeed.
“Another thing, it seems to be changing course; but there is nothing around it to make it vary, no large planets or moons, very little gravitational pull that would impact the object’s trajectory. It wasn’t heading directly toward Earth until yesterday, though it looked to be a close encounter, a couple of LDs at least.”
“And an LD is?” Bill asked the question, waiting for Chad’s answer. Chad knew more about astronomy than The Admiral and Jeff put together.
“Lunar Distance, the distance between the Earth and the Moon, about 250,000 miles,” Chad explained. “Two LDs would be twice the distance from the Earth to the Moon, about 500,000 miles distant. That’s safe but still relatively close in astronomical terms.
“It now appears it may hit us. It’s big, it’s fast and if it hits, the planet will have a drastic change. Whatever it is, the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab in California didn’t pick it up either.”
“At least we won’t have to deal with the global warming fiasco!” Jeff laughed and ordered another Duckhorn from the personality-plus waitress he could not place. “I mean, if we’re all dead.”
“How long before impact?” Bill asked.
Just as Chad was making the previous comment, Ride Sally Ride abruptly ended; and it seemed Park Place was suddenly a library, quiet as a mouse. The brunette beauty dismounted the piano gracefully, considering the heels. There was enough leg to keep it interesting, and Bill thought this babe had some gorgeous gams.
In the back corner booth, the closest booth to the three friends, a husky-type man was drinking a martini and a cup of coffee. Chad noticed that the man was reading USA Today and didn’t seem interested in what they had to say, probably had not heard a thing, at least he hoped. He would remember to listen to the music more closely so he would know when it was ending.
The music started again, this time the keyboardist belting out an old Justin Timberlake song, something about holding hands, toes in the sand.
Rich Badey was the man in the corner booth, an investigative reporter with CNN. He appeared to be reading the paper, paying no-never-mind to anyone or anything around, not even the new dancer who graced the piano, though as the night aged, the dancers would be less graceful he knew, at least from past evenings at Park Place.
Like most experienced reporters, Rich had the gift of hearing what was going on all around him, as though he had surround- sound hearing. That’s how investigative reporters break big stories; and he already had one big story today, the loss of Jack Russell and his plane load of missionaries, somewhere in the Caribbean between Puerto Rico and Montserrat, another victim of the Soufriére Hills Volcano.
Rich kept reading his newspaper, holding it in his left hand, a small tattoo at the base of his thumb, barely visible due to the shade of his skin. Rich’s ancestors were from somewhere in Africa, who knows where; and he had written a book about the traumas of his ancestors, ripped right out of their families, their wives and kids, lives forever lost.
The slaves weren’t stolen by the white men from England, France and America but were purchased, sold by his own people, his ancestry selling his ancestry. It had never made sense to him, how Africans could kidnap other Africans and sell them into a life of misery, and often death. But then there were the Africans enslaving the Jews just four thousand years earlier. What a world we live in, has it ever changed? History just repeating history, like it always had. Rich had read something about that in the Bible.
The newspaper in his left hand, his right slowly opened his vinyl-clad briefcase, reporters didn’t make enough to have alligator, and Rich wouldn’t have an alligator brief case anyway. He removed his small state-of-the-art recording device shaped like a pen, something he might sign the check with. He placed it on the table, carefully aiming it at the table, hoping to at least pick up some conversational fragments, especially between music sets. He was sure he heard something about a space object.
He would listen to the digital recording later.
The silent streamer floated across the bottom portion of the flat-screen TV and caught Rich’s eye, as did the Channel Five news commentator, Condi Zimmerman. He wondered how those stations found such beautiful women.
The CDC was a center of activity when the technician from Global Warming HVAC drove his white Ford cargo van to the service entrance at the rear of the facility, the parking area for contractors and large delivery vans.
Vinny parked and opened the sliding passenger-side door, grabbed his toolbox, pressure and Freon gauges, and headed up the loading ramp and into contractor security.
“Hey Vinny, whazzup?”
The security guys, and gal, there was only one gal, especially liked Vinny. Vinny just had that aura of goodness.
Vinny had been with Global Warming HVAC for several years and had been servicing the penthouse chillers at CDC almost the whole time he was a tech for Bubba. Bubba really liked him and gave him the better clients to service.
Vinny always remembered the guards’ birthdays. He would bring them small gifts, something hand-made, since Vinny didn’t make a lot of money. He always asked about their children and would sometimes say a prayer with them if his mood was right. Vinny was a good Christian man, always prayed at meals, football games and before he got on I-285 around Atlanta. He had good Italian heritage.
Passing security was a joke really, considering how much CDC had supposedly tightened up; but they knew Vinny, and it was the day for the monthly HVAC service inspection. It was posted on the security schedule, just like always.
Vinny was on his sixth year of employment with Global Warming, Atlanta’s largest minority-owned contractor. The owner of Global, nicknamed Bubba because of his love for fishing and drinking beer, was married to Samarra Russell’s closest friend, Jill. Bubba knew that his association with Samarra’s husband, a U.S. Senator, had helped him land some great contracts in the Atlanta area and beyond. Bubba’s accounts included the CDC, Emory University, Georgia Tech and Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
Six years earlier, on July 4th, Vinny answered an emergency air conditioning call at the Hudgens Center for the Arts, located between Lawrenceville and Duluth, both North Atlanta suburbs.
The Center was sponsoring a special Children’s Fair for underprivileged children of all ages, and Jill had invested long hours to make it happen. Less than an hour later, the Center’s air conditioning problem was resolved and was cooling better than it had since Jill had been involved there. Vinny was great with the kids too. She was so impressed with the young Vinny and recommended him to her husband, reminding him that Vinny was an Italian minority with a lot of experience. Not just anyone could work on chillers. Vinny had worked for Global ever since. “Hey Vinny, did you know Russ is in the hospital? Came down with something during the night, all of a sudden.” The guard was nonchalant.
“Oh no!” Vinny was concerned. He had known Russ five years, and they were friends from the start, similar values. Plus they went to the same church.
“Yep. Don’t know what all happened. They’re keepin’ it hush-hush.”
Vinny, equipment in tow, entered the service elevator. The elevator walls, unlike the deep mahogany walls in the main building elevators, were covered with hanging fabric, thickly padded to protect the walls from damage. Even so, the walls were damaged, holes torn in the padding by heavy furniture and large moving dollies from the past.
The Security Officer in Charge disarmed the alarm system for the roof access hatch, and the guards returned to the day they had inherited from the previous night of horror. Police and Homeland Security agents were everywhere.
The service elevator journeyed ever so slowly to the fifth floor; and Vinny thought about the events of the day on his way up. He had not been scheduled for the service call, but here he was. He had volunteered for the call the day before; but Bubba assigned another tech instead, Charley Rich. Charley had once been a property manager before deciding to change trades in a rapidly failing real estate market.
Vinny left his gauges at the bottom of the wall-ladder and ascended, toolbox in hand. His small stature helped him through the hatch and onto the roof.
Rich Badey left Park Place five minutes after the three men he had monitored, the evening’s almost full moon clearly visible, even above all the light pollution shining skyward from the surrounding buildings and streetlights. He walked to his condo just a block away. Rich loved the Perimeter Mall area, everything was within walking distance.
The pen-recorder in hand, Rich hurried to plug directly into the USB port at the rear of his new Sony laptop. The microphone was the high-techiest of all such devices on the market and came with a steep price. The digital-filtering network in the pen’s circuitry should make most of the conversation discernible, and it did.
Some of the conversation was a little garbled by the music. “…hits in two days. All hell could break loose if it’s anything like the one that hit in 1985.” It was the voice of the brown- haired dude, Chad he thought, or something like that.
“Sheryl Lasseter, The Admiral and … (garbled)… Thurman met at the Pentagon to see what to do about the satellites. We can turn… (garbled)… save a few, maybe most. The flare is extremely proton-dense but is traveling fast and shouldn’t last long. The satellites with new shielding devices should make it.
“Electrical grids all over …(garbled)… could fry. Lots of ice cream gonna melt.”
The music started again and conversation was lost. When this music set finally stopped, Donna Summers immediately began singing the disco-version of MacArthur Park through the surrounding sound system; and the short dude was saying something about Israel, Mossad and a new seven-year peace treaty. Apparently the United States and the Palestinians liked the peace agreement, but Israel still had serious doubts. Rich figured that Israel would once again make concessions and probably turn over control of East Jerusalem to the Palestinians or some other foolish gesture.
Rich knew a little about the Arab-Israeli Six Day War, as it was later called. He was an investigative reporter and had written free-lance articles about the miraculous rebirth of Israel and the wars that would be Israel’s future. He knew all about May 14, 1948, the day that Israel was reborn. Reborn because Israel had existed as a country before, unlike Palestine, and was the only country in the history of the world to be totally destroyed and then reestablished. The same could be said for the language of the Jews, Hebrew.
Her inhabitants were disbursed or killed by the Romans in 70 A.D., and Jerusalem was ravaged and burned to the ground. Almost 2000 years later, atheists around the world would proclaim the error of the ancient Jewish prophets, asking:
“When will this prophecy be fulfilled? When is the Jewish God going to restore the disgraced and disheveled Jewish people to their land? It will never happen. Everything today is just like it was 2000 years ago.” They scoffed and laughed at the unenlightened.
But it did happen, almost, almost because the prophecy stated that Israel would occupy her original borders, the borders that God had spelled out to Moses, three and a half millennia before, at least according to the Old Testament and Jewish history.
For a birthday present that May 14, 1948, five Arab Muslim nations attacked Israel; and Israel has been defending herself ever since. The new borders that established Israel as a nation on that day were nowhere near the borders as outlined during Moses’ day. Israel was less than half her original size.
Rich remembered one quote from a May 18, 1967 broadcast by Cairo Radio:
“The sole method we shall apply against Israel is a total war which will result in the extermination of Zionist existence.”
It seemed to Rich that Israel had been at war with one Arab nation or another ever since, Israeli territory constantly increasing in size as the borders expanded through war, not brought on by the Israelis but by the surrounding countries. Prophecy was being fulfilled before the eyes of the world, but no one seemed to be paying attention except the evangelical Christians. Even today, rockets still landed in Israeli settlements, fired by militants that called themselves martyrs.
Rich listened to the recording two more times, gleaning all the verifiable conversation he could. This had proven to be a great day:
Airplane full of missionaries disappears in an ash cloud. An asteroid or something was heading toward Earth.
Israel was giving up part of Jerusalem, the City of David, Israel’s recognized capital from ancient times.
Rich considered what would Jesus do about this, Israel giving back land that God had delivered into their hands? He downloaded the digital recording to his laptop and called his boss, Taj St. Amande. He did not think God would be happy with the Peace Agreement.