“There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.”
Luke 21:11
In the early morning, Samarra finally drifted off, entering the world of dream land but not happy dreams land. Her sleep was troubled. She seemed to have a slight fever and her back hurt, probably from climbing the ladder with the bulky toolbox earlier in the night.
As she slept in her comfortable Buckhead home, her breathing a little shallow, Vinny the HVAC tech slowly climbed the wall-ladder on the 5th floor of CDC, cautiously. A fall to the hard concrete floor would not be good. He penetrated the roof hatch and walked over the pebbled roof as best he could, and into the chiller room.
Vinny volunteered the day before to do the chiller service at the CDC, it would have been easier for him, but that was not to be. As a result, Vinny’s morning started a little earlier than it normally did.
Charley Rich had been the tech scheduled to go to the CDC today; and being a creature of habit, he stopped for breakfast every day except Sunday, at Magnolia Bakery where he purchased a coffee of the day and an almond bear claw. Charley always parked his shiny new truck around back, so no one would hit it. He was that way. Guys were that way.
Balancing the coffee, bear claw and truck keys as best he could, Charley didn’t hear or see the man in a black hoody hurry from the woods adjacent to the parking lot. There were no metal halide security lights to provide safety; but it was a nice neighborhood.
Before Charley could unlock the truck door, the pain of the six-inch, carbon-fiber blade echoed through his body, as the blade slipped silently under Charley’s rib cage. The killer was good.
Charley would have yelled out in pain but for the chloroform napkin held tightly over his mouth. He could not defend himself, as his hands were full of coffee, claw and keys; but the look of surprise in Charley’s now widely-opened, green eyes was priceless in Vinny’s mind. Charley couldn’t believe that Vinny, who prayed in public and coached little-league baseball, was killing him. Vinny loved the thrill that went through his body when he was blessed by the killing of the infidel, and his body quivered.
Charley was dead before he would’ve hit the ground, except that Charley didn’t hit the ground. Instead he was dragged into the woods where the man with the hoody resided, or at least visited occasionally.
Vinny took Charley’s keys, Charley wouldn’t need them anymore, and drove away as Charley was making his way up the stairway to heaven, at least he had always assumed that’s the way it would happen. You died and went to heaven if you’ve lived the right life and kept your faith in Jesus. Charley believed that until his dying breath.
Vinny was not who he seemed and was one-of-two, identical twins born to rich parents and raised in Qatar. Who wasn’t rich in Qatar, the promised land of riches, surrounded by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Bahrain, just a hop, skip and jump from Iran?
Vinny thought Qatar was decadent, a place that, by the grace of Allah, was now the world’s richest nation and claimant of the world’s tallest building, Burj Dubai. Take the tallest building in the world, put the Eiffel Tower on top, and it still would not reach skyward as far as Burj Dubai. Then there was the magnificent, manmade Palm Jumeriah, an island shaped like a palm tree with seventeen palm fronds and thirty-two beachfront resorts. Vinny did not consider Qatar to be Islamic by any means and knew the tower would fall and the manmade island would sink, soon.
Vinny was born as Aboud Rehza, the identical twin brother of Mohammed. Aboud and Mohammed were so identical, often their parents could not tell the two boys apart, at least in appearance. Every other way they seemed to be the same too, same quirks and characteristics. Aboud and Mohammed’s parents were considered to be moderate Muslims; and in their minds, they were. This however, was not the case.
If the cash flow could ever be traced, and it couldn’t, the discovery would show hundreds of millions, maybe billions of U.S. dollars flowing through a sea of financial deception; and the sea flowed from Miami through Grand Cayman and Jamaica, to Switzerland and other far-off, exotic locations. This money wasn’t going on vacation though; it was going to a Saudi bank that no one knew about, except the Select, a rumored but never proven group of Japanese businessmen. There were other names connected with the group. Where the money went from the Saudi bank, no one seemed to know.
Several international Islamic militant groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Abu Sayef, al-Qaeda and others, received money from the Saudis, even the Shiite sects. No one seemed to know who comprised the Select. They did, however, know what to do with the funding.
At age twelve, many years earlier, Aboud and Mohammed were enrolled in the best-of-the-best al-Qaeda training camps in eastern Afghanistan, a way their parents felt would teach the kids self-defense of both their bodies and their precious religion, God’s religion, the peaceful and gracious religion of Islam. There they learned to speak English fluently, as well as Italian, Spanish and French. Aboud took it upon himself to learn two other languages during his six years of training, German and Chechnyan.
They attended school, a madrasah, much of their day, learning all about the Prophet Muhammad and his goodness and his peaceful nature. They learned from the Quran and clerics how bad and misguided the Jews and Christians were. They learned about the Jews and their foolish Passover ritual that the Jews denied. Every Muslim knew that the Jews killed Christian children at Passover and drank their bold. The Jews and Christians would change, or die.
Aboud and Mohammed Rehza loved The Prophet, more than all things, next to Allah. They hated the filthy Jews more than anything, including Satan himself. They knew, had been taught, that Jews were worse than the devil; and the Christians weren’t far behind. Then there were the Shiites, their Muslim brothers who they couldn’t stand. Aboud and Mohammed were Sunnis, not Shiites; and they were the true Muhammadans.
As the boys grew older, they received extensive training in heating and air conditioning systems and repairs, even attending the renowned Carrier Internationalé Heating and Air Conditioning Training School in Paris, École du Réfrigeration Carrier. Carrier was the world leader in heating, cooling and environmental control systems; and Carrier equipment provided much cooling for the hot, dry atmosphere in the Middle East. Carrier even provided the necessary cooling to freeze ice in the desert outside Dubai, necessary for the world’s largest indoor snow skiing lodge.
As precocious as the twins were, they still had not figured out that Muslims had difficulty getting along with anyone, even their very own families. They had not learned that more Muslims had been killed by other Muslims, than all the Muslims killed by the West.
The Book of Genesis had predicted such, this enmity between the descendants of Ishmael, Abraham’s first but illegitimate son, the son of Abraham and his young servant girl, Hagar.
Because Ishmael was a child of wedlock, not the legitimate son of Abraham and his wife Sarah, God passed a judgment against Ishmael and his future Arab descendants, saying plainly and clearly in Genesis, 16:12:
“He (Ishmael) will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.”
However, as smart as the Sunni twins were, they had never read the Book of Genesis, only the Quran. Old Testaments and New Testaments were not allowed in their land, under penalty of death.
Aboud and Mohammed were different than other Arabs or Persians. Their pedigree had been genetically chosen, their parents being associate members of Select; and the twins did not look like everyone else. Their skin was lighter, less olive. Everyone at the camp was puzzled, wondering why the twins looked, well, so American, so European.
“It is a gift from Allah. Why do you question?” bin Laden reassured the trainers.
“He sent them for His glory, for Allah has Great Plans for us. Be patient. It is not for you to question Allah.”
With that, bin Laden rose from the floor of the cave and moved further back into the darkness where he would meditate for hours. This night he thanked God, Allah, wondering how the God of the Crescent Moon could weave such wonderful mysteries in his life.
Vinny, adrenalin still running his system after the killing of Charley Rich earlier that morning, walked to the chiller on the left side of the penthouse mechanical room and picked up the toolbox that was under the chilled-water pump, marked with a green arrow, just as planned. He opened the toolbox carefully, after donning a small oxygen mask, just in case. The samples were intact, though he noticed that the integrity of one of the Spanish Flu powder vials had been slightly compromised. He was glad he had the mask and gloves.
Vinny killed an hour, reading the Quran in the mechanical room. He wanted it to appear that he had actually done something, and something he had done. This was a great day for Allah, the Merciful.
An hour later Vinny exited security and waved to the lone guard as he left, heading to Charley’s white cargo van. Vinny knew the guard would never notice that he signed in as Charley Rich, the guards were so slack when Jason or Russ weren’t around. Besides, Charley and Vinny had similar profiles. This had been too freaking easy.
He drove the white van out of the lot, past the security vehicles still present from the previous night, but not before securing a time-delayed explosive on the frame of the small, blue pickup truck that would later be driven off the lot by the sole security guard, the only one who could identify Vinny; and he was glad of all the distractions. He would not worry about the security cameras. They were under control.
Vinny made his way to I-85 north, beginning a three-hour drive from Atlanta to the Great Smoky Mountains along the North Carolina-Tennessee border, with a brief stop at Magnolia Bakery where he would leave Charley’s van and walk two blocks up Satellite Boulevard to Waffle House, where Vinny would pick up his car, parked much earlier in the day while still dark.
From the Waffle House, Vinny would take a very circuitous route to the training camp of The Army of the Christian Soldier (TACS), a secretive and yet undiscovered Christian militant group working directly with al-Qaeda, at least the group considered themselves to be Christian. Of course, the Ku Klux Klan considered themselves to be Christian too. Vinny truly hated working with the devil.
The Christian group’s intent was to overthrow the government of the United States, take over the military, invade Israel and Jerusalem, ridding the world of the Jew problem, forever. Hitler tried and failed. The Army of the Christian Soldier would not. Then they would take care of the Muslim problem, all of them.
TACS thought Vinny to be one of them, not an al-Qaeda supporter. They all went fishing together and drank beer. Muslims did not drink beer. Vinny was not a camel jockey.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
The phone rang, waking Samarra from her restless sleep. She answered without checking the caller ID. She felt awful, her muscles ached.
“Hello?” Her speech was slurred.
“Samarra? Honey? Is that you?” Jack Russell hardly recognized his wife’s voice.
“It is. Hey Jack, where are you?”
“I’m still in Israel, remember? Are you okay? You don’t sound so good.”
“I’m all right,” Samarra began to get her bearings. “Oh yeah, you are in Israel.”
Jack was taken aback by this conversation. He was calling his wife from the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, just to check in and let Samarra know he would be home a day early. He heard the phone hit the floor.
“Sorry, I dropped the phone.” Samarra was groggy and could barely hold her head up.
Her hair was not so beautiful at this moment, but disheveled, now damp from perspiration. Samarra knew this was not glistening, her hair wet from a brewing fever.
“I’m coming home a day early and should arrive at Hartsfield tomorrow about noon.” Jack wondered if he should go home now. Samarra was not herself. “Are you sick?”
“No Jack, I’m fine. I think I’m coming down with a cold.
That’s all.”
“Don’t give it to Thomas, you know how sick he can get.” “Thomas?” Reality came back to life in an instant, waking
Samarra from her stupor; and she began to sob quietly, finally remembering the events of the previous day, the finger, the ring. “Jack, I’ll call you back in a little while. I have to run.” Samarra hung up the phone, leaving Jack with a dead line and a lot of questions. Samarra was not normal and was not a crier, but Jack could hear the tears.
Samarra’s kitchen television was still on, had been on all night she guessed. She didn’t even remember coming home a few hours earlier; but now the memories of the rescue vehicles and a ball of flame, came back to her.
The yellow-lettered streamer flowing across the bottom of the TV screen in Samarra’s kitchen, the same streamer that caught the attention of Rich Badey, investigative reporter, the night before at Park Place Café, continued to silently report the news of the vanishings. Samarra briefly thought Condi Zimmerman, the news lady,mseed to be working a lot lately; and Condi reported:
“Again, the latest news is troubling. Robert Jeremias’ plane has been located less than a mile off the shore of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, still floating on the water’s surface. The pilot and copilot were found safe, pulled to shore by the locals who live on Vieques; but no other survivors have been found at this time. The plane was completely empty of passengers. It’s as though they simply vanished into thin air.
“If that isn’t bad enough, reports are still coming in from Italy, Spain and Israel, as well as the United States, reports about missing people.”
Condi paused a moment, sipping what looked like water, thinking about her best friend Mary Bower who was also missing. Not hearing from her all day yesterday, Condi stopped by Mary’s home to check because it was unusual. Mary and Condi talked every day, at least twice. Condi used her key to enter, when neither Mary nor her husband Bob came to the door. The house was empty, the cars in the garage, food on the table and a large pot of chili still simmered on the Thermadore range. Mary would never leave home with the stove on, Condi knew her well. Condi turned the gas burner off leaving the chili on the stove, and left.
“Several planes have disappeared from traffic control radars around the globe, not because of volcanic ash, as in the case of Mr. Jeremias’ plane of missionaries, but for no apparent reason.
“Twenty two people are missing, vanished, in Italy; thirty something from Spain and listen to this. A whopping 2342 Messianic Jews belonging to Jews for Jesus have disappeared from their headquarters compound in Acre, Israel. The Jews for Jesus have been under tremendous pressure to leave Israel during the past two years, so the question is: did the 2342 Messianic Jews just disappear into thin air or were they deported in the past day or two?
“In the United States and Mexico, reports are still rolling in with hundreds of missing.
“Some Christians are wondering if this is the rapture, the belief by many Christians that in The End they will disappear to meet Jesus in the clouds, just before the you-know-what hits the fan.
“We have with us now the Reverend Bob Linn. Reverend, welcome.”
“Thanks Condi, it’s a pleasure to be here.” Reverend Linn was an ordained minister, though many wondered why.
“So Reverend Linn, is this the rapture? What do you think?” Condi Zimmerman asked the questions.
“Of course not Condi, and I’m not sure why the news is covering it as such. Your station receives federal funds, as do other news stations; and the spewing of religious fantasy should not be allowed on the federal airwaves. It is an issue of church and state.”
“Reverend Linn, that will have to be a conversation during a different interview. If it’s not the rapture, then what is it?” Condi persisted.
“Reverend Linn, I apologize. We have breaking news from the White House and will come back to our discussion in a few.”
Dan Brumfield, the White House spokesman, appeared calm as he took the podium.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I am sure you have heard and are wondering about all the disappearances of loved ones. This is not a panic situation; and every police agency is investigating, including Interpol. I am sure we will get to the bottom of this soon.
“We do have other disturbing news. There has been some recent, abnormal solar activity that has resulted in a Coronal Mass Ejection, CME for short, an ejection of solar gases and radiation. This happens fairly often, but apparently this CME is massive and is journeying straight toward Earth. I am sure you already heard something about it this morning on CNN, and I apologize to the public for not coming forthwith sooner. Scooped by CNN again.
The room full of reporters laughed quietly, nervously.
“While this ejection has nothing to do with man-made global warming and the current unseasonal temperatures, it could have an impact on our national electrical grid systems. In the event that the impact is as projected by Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, we encourage all citizens to stay home and indoors for the next 36-48 hours.
“I know that’s a lot to ask, but if you’re driving or flying, this radiation could short-circuit the onboard electrical systems.
“All plane traffic is being halted globally for the next two days. We know what a mess this will cause, but the President feels an ounce of precaution, well, you know the saying.
“I will not take any questions, but there will be further updates as they develop.”
Dan Brumfield turned and left the podium, reporters shouting out questions as though they hadn’t heard Dan say there would be no questions and answers.
Condi continued:
“I’m sorry about that Reverend Linn. Where were we? Oh yes, the rapture. Why are you so sure it’s not the rapture? How do you explain the disappearance of two thousand and some folks in Israel, part of the thousands of Jews for Jesus members there?”
“Condi, I am sure there is a reasonable, believable explanation. We do not need to resort to myth. The term rapture is never mentioned in the Bible, not the Old or New Testaments. This is a myth perpetrated by early Christian fanatics, and the Jews for Jesus is more of a cult than an organization. They were probably escorted out of Israel by the Israeli Defense Force. The IDF don’t think much of Messianic so-called Jews. Jews cannot be Christians, we all know that.”
“But wait Reverend Linn, wasn’t Jesus Jewish? Weren’t all his followers, at least before his execution at the hands of the Romans, Jewish?” Condi knew something about this subject, being a Sunday school teacher of Old Testament studies.
“Condi, I believe in Jesus as much as anyone; but surely you don’t believe all the stories these early Christians made up.
“What the hell was that?” The Reverend felt the sudden shift in the floor of the studio before asking that un-reverend like question.
“Are we having an earthquake?”
Fox News went off the air, the TV now a blur of nothingness, the good Reverend Linn wondering if Manhattan was on a fault- line.