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  “Well,” Decker said, trying not to show how disturbed he was and at the same time intending to bring the subject to a close, “I’m glad to see at least that you didn’t brand your forehead like some of the others.”

  “The mark is only for the Koum Damah Patar — male virgins selected by God to serve as his priests.”

  Decker raised his eyebrows but was determined to remain calm. “With three kids, I guess that leaves you out,” he said, seizing the opportunity to bring the conversation back to a more agreeable topic. “So, when can I meet this Dr. Rhoda of yours?”

  “The next time you’re in Israel, I guess.”

  Decker nodded. “Good,” he said. “I’ll look forward to it.”

  “Where are you staying?” he asked.

  “I don’t really have any plans.”

  “You’ll stay with me then,” Decker said in a way that indicated he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He had no intention of letting Tom out of his sight.

  Tom smiled and nodded his appreciation.

  “Right now I have to go over to the General Assembly. It’ll be extremely crowded, but I want you to come with me as my guest. Too bad you don’t have a camera with you,” Decker said. “You’re about to witness history in the making.”

  * * * * *

  Gerard Poupardin looked around nervously as he walked into the men’s room on the third floor of the UN Secretariat building. Under his arm he carried a sealed diplomatic pouch. The restroom was empty. Stepping into a stall, he locked the door behind him, opened the pouch, removed the pistol, and put it in his pocket.

  * * * * *

  The Hall of the General Assembly was filled to capacity with the delegations of 226 countries. Many heads of state who had come to hear the speech and to be seen in the presence of power had also managed to get in. There were no empty seats. The visitor’s gallery was closed to the public to make room for other dignitaries and the heads of UN agencies who had flown in for the occasion. The press gallery could not have held another reporter. Staff members from the many UN offices packed the back of the hall and were overflowing into the aisles.

  Decker looked over at his regular seating area and noticed that the seats were already taken by friends of the American ambassador. He could have asked them to surrender the seats, but it wouldn’t have been good politics. “I hope you don’t mind if we stand,” Decker said.

  “No, that’s fine,” Tom answered.

  “Come on. At least we can move near the front.”

  In the back of the room Gerard Poupardin entered, nervously holding his hand over his right jacket pocket in an effort to conceal the bulge from the gun. Christopher would be stepping up to the dais soon, and despite the fact that he felt in control of his emotions, Poupardin could feel the sweat begin to bead on his forehead.

  It took a couple of minutes for Decker and Tom to get near the front of the hall and it was another five minutes before the session got underway. The first order of business was to read the nomination of the Security Council to the General Assembly. A moment later Christopher got up to speak. From his position near the front of the hall, Decker watched with fatherly pride as Christopher walked to the lectern before the assembled members of the United Nations. The sound of applause was thunderous and prolonged. Christopher nodded appreciation, but the applause continued for several minutes.

  From the back of the hall Gerard Poupardin pushed his way through the crowd toward the front of the room. The point of no return was now only seconds away, and Poupardin felt more like a spectator to the events than a participant. There was no longer any thought of if. Now it had become only a question of when. The time for thought, which he had assumed he would gain by putting off a decision, had been spent in the mere process of coming to this point, not in any additional contemplation. Now all that he could do was follow through, pushed along as if in a dream, mindlessly watching and seemingly unable to alter the course he had laid out. Without planning it or even thinking about it, he felt his hand drop into his pocket. With disinterested abandon he grasped the butt of the pistol as his thumb began to play with the hammer. He didn’t notice the faces around him, but his course had now brought him within three feet of Decker Hawthorne and Tom Donafin.

  Unnoticed, Tom pulled a handwritten note from his pocket and slipped it into Decker’s jacket.

  The applause finally subsided and Christopher moved closer to the microphone to speak. “My fellow delegates and citizens of the world,” he began, using the greeting that had been Jon Hansen’s trademark opening. That had been Decker’s suggestion, and from the applause that followed, it had been a good one. Christopher looked down from the dais to where Decker stood. Decker was pleased but surprised that Christopher had been able to spot him among the throng. Decker clapped and smiled his approval, but Christopher didn’t smile back. Instead, his face again was covered with that same strange look of foreboding Decker had seen before, only now it appeared as sheer terror.

  From the corner of his left eye, Decker saw a flash of movement. In front of him on the dais, Christopher suddenly raised his hands in a strange motion that seemed an attempt to protect himself. An instant later, a thunderous sound exploded just inches from Decker’s head, and simultaneously he saw a massive spray of red erupt from Christopher’s left wrist and face as the bullet passed through his arm and continued into his right eye and penetrated his brain.

  Wincing from the pain in his ear and stunned by what he had seen, Decker turned toward the sound. Someone . . . a man . . . stood there, his arms still extended in front of him and his hands wrapped around the butt of a revolver. His finger still held the trigger. Decker wheezed in disbelief.

  It was Tom Donafin.

  As Tom let his arms drop, he looked back at Decker.

  “Why?” Decker gasped in horror. The sound of cheers around them had faded and turned to screams and cries of disbelief.

  “He was going to leave me—” Tom began, but his explanation was cut short.

  Decker watched as Tom’s body was thrown violently to the right, his already misshapen head exploding in a cascade of red; spraying blood, pieces of brain, and bone fragments over those who stood nearby. On his left, he saw Gerard Poupardin tightly gripping the gun that had fired the shot.

  Poupardin was lost, overcome by the drive to kill. He had turned his gun on Tom, who, having shot Christopher, seemed in Poupardin’s insanity the obvious surrogate for his hatred. Poupardin’s bullet had passed through Tom’s brain and struck the steel plate left in his skull after his childhood automobile accident. The force of the bullet stripped the screws holding the plate out of their moorings and tore a gaping hole in the side of his head. Tom was dead even before he began to fall.

  Blood gushed out from the massive wound, forming a large pool on the floor near Decker’s feet. The screams of a woman nearby barely pierced the ringing in his ears from the two shots. Then suddenly three more shots were heard, fired in rapid succession into the chest of Gerard Poupardin by a security guard, who, seeing him holding a gun, mistakenly assumed that it had been Poupardin who had shot Christopher.

  The large monitor mounted in the front of the room focused on the lifeless, blood-streaked face of Christopher Goodman. From the socket where his right eye had been, blood pulsed several times and then stopped, along with his heartbeat. Another stream of blood issued from a hole torn through his left forearm.

  From behind him, Decker felt a wall of flesh drive him to the floor. It had all taken only seconds, but as Decker fell under the mob of fleeing dignitaries, it seemed that a lifetime of loss accompanied him.

  The crush bruised Decker’s rib cage and badly twisted his left knee, tearing ligaments and popping the joint out of its socket. The panic was unnecessary. There was no danger to anyone else in the room. Tom had accomplished his hideous, unexplained mission and had made no attempt to escape or even to protect himself.

  Later, when he was alone in his grief, Decker found Tom’s note in his jacket pocke
t. “Do not weep for me,” it said. “What I do shall not be held against me. I am the Avenger of Blood.”

  Chapter 14

  Dark Legion

  Northwest Iraq

  From deep below the bed of the Euphrates River, between the Iraqi cities of Ana and Hit and bordered by the four ancient river guard posts of Baia Malcha, Auzura, Jibb Jibba, and Olabu, a dark assembly crept eagerly toward the surface, its members fighting and clawing in the agitated hive to be among the first ranks to emerge.[51] Their time was near. They knew it. This was the hour and the day and the month and the year for which they had waited, since before the dawn of human history.[52] Their manumission would endure but a moment, and each hoped to make the most of it while they could. Then, unheard by physical ears, a trumpet sounded and thunder rolled and chains were loosed and fell to the ground.

  Ruins along the Euphrates River

  John and Cohen’s most recent prophecy was about to be fulfilled upon the people of the Earth.

  At last the time had arrived. The Earth retched, and the waters of the Euphrates churned and boiled and then violently erupted, releasing an ooze of savage, shadowy, repulsive brutes into the world of men. Like lava from a volcano or pus from an inflamed abscess, the vile horde, imperceptible to human sight, bounded forth in all directions across the face of the Earth, seeking out human life wherever it could be found. The foul stench of burning sulfur rose to the heavens and filled the air for a thousand miles as row upon hideous row of the ghoulish spectral mass emerged upon the Earth. Arrayed in ghostly armor, their otherwise gray hides covered with breastplates of fiery red, dark blue, and yellow, each of the sinister throng rode upon an aberrational mount, which resembled nothing so much as it did a horse, but which had a head and mane more like that of a lion and nostrils filled with putrid breath of yellow smoke and flame. The tail of each beast seemed to rise and move independent of the movement of the creature itself, and on close examination appeared less like a tail and far more like a venomous serpent grafted to the beast’s hindquarters.[53] Scores of the malevolent legion rose above the Earth on leathery wings and filled the sky with foul shrieks of glee as they ravenously scouted ahead of the dark army of 200 million, each bent on participating in the destruction of man.[54]

  Northeast of the city of Ar-Ramādī, a small village of Iraqi Marsh Arabs from the marshy areas around the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers lay sleeping in the cool predawn March air. Unaware of the approaching danger, an old man rose from his sleep and threw on his cloak in preparation for morning prayer toward Mecca. Outside his home the invisible legions advanced with incredible speed, bearing down upon his small village, eager to draw first blood. Unheard and unseen, one of the phantom riders passed effortlessly through the wall of the man’s house, saliva dripping from the corners of his grotesque mouth as he spotted his first victim. Sensing only the faint odious fetor of burning sulfur, the old man’s body shuddered as though he had tasted a bitter fruit as the invisible demon entered him and took control of his mind and body.[55]

  Quietly, so as not to awaken anyone else in the house, the man quickly walked to the kitchen area and picked up a large knife and brought it back to his bed. Then, nudging her gently so she would wake up to see it coming, he plunged the knife without second thought into the heart of his wife of forty years. The terror in her eyes was so great he had to cover his mouth quickly with one hand so that his laughter wouldn’t wake the others. Gleefully, he then repeated his act until he had cut short the lives of his two sons, their wives, and all of his grandchildren. Looking around him at the bloodbath, he finally relaxed, found a chair, sat down, and broke into loud uncontrollable laughter.

  After a moment of basking in the self-satisfaction of his achievement, the old man rose and ran from his house, howling in crazed revelry as he brandished the bloodied knife, looking for others to feed his blood lust. Throughout the small town, the invisible army found other victims and murder reigned triumphant over every living thing.

  In a mud house nearby, a young woman squatted by the fire as she prepared breakfast for her still-sleeping husband. Abruptly she stood up straight and dropped her cooking utensils to the ground. Then looking around, she took up a heavy skillet, left her meal preparations, and went to where her husband lay sleeping. Kneeling beside him, she raised the pan above her head and brought it down with all her strength onto her husband’s skull. For just a moment his eyes opened and he looked up at her in agony and bewilderment as she laughed, raised the skillet, and hit him again. Losing consciousness, he slipped away as his wife struck him repeatedly until his head was crushed beyond recognition.

  With his blood splattered everywhere, the woman dropped the skillet and, still laughing, walked back to the kitchen where the breakfast she had been preparing was now burned. Excitedly she lifted the hem of her blood-soaked garment and held it up to the flame until it caught. With her dress in flames, she giggled as she swayed from side to side and the fire engulfed her.

  With increasing swiftness the murderous mounted madness swept across farm, village, town, and city.[56] The bloodshed was unimaginable as people turned on one another, driven on by forces they couldn’t see or understand. As the madness swallowed the capital of Baghdad, all communications with the outside world were lost. There was no one to report the story to the rest of the world because no one survived. Everyone was killed. For death’s vile agents, the more violent the slaughter, the better. And when no one was left to kill, the last person standing took his own life.

  Seven and a half hours after it started, the insanity reached Umm Qasr and Faw and the other cities on the Persian Gulf, where people ran by the thousands like lemmings into the sea to drown.[57]

  Circle of death after 7.5 hours

  London

  Stan McKay spit out a pistachio shell and washed down the half-chewed nut with a quick swallow of his soft drink. The young journalist was still new on the job and so was quick to respond to the blinking light before him. Picking up the receiver of the phone, he answered, “McKay.” No more than that was necessary – anyone intentionally calling that number would know they had reached the headquarters of World News Network in London.

  “Let me talk to Jack Washington,” the voice demanded.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” McKay replied. “Mr. Washington is out of the office.”

  “Then let me talk to Oliver Peyton.”

  “I’m sorry,” McKay said again. “He’s with Mr. Washington. Can I help you?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” the voice said after a second’s hesitation. “Look, this is James Paulson. I’m about to send you a live feed from the Riyadh office. I want you to make absolutely certain this report gets to Jack Washington as soon as possible. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, sir,” McKay answered confidently.

  “Okay, I’ll start the feed in twenty seconds. Is that enough time for you?”

  “Uh . . . yes, sir. I think so,” he answered with less certainty.

  “Okay, just do your best.”

  It took about thirty seconds for McKay to check his equipment. “All set, sir,” he said when he returned to the phone, and switched on his own monitor so he could see what was coming across.

  “This is James Paulson reporting from the WNN offices in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,” he began. “Outside our offices, an unexplained scene of utter chaos is unfolding.” The hand-held camera moved from Paulson to the WNN office window and a grisly spectacle on the street, three floors below.

  “It looks like a war zone out there,” he said, as the camera man, whose image was reflected on the closed window, zoomed in on various scenes. There were people throwing bricks and stones; there were people wielding knives and clubs; and there were the bloodied bodies of those who had already fallen. “The violence seems to be totally indiscriminate,” Paulson continued. “Shop owners killing customers and vice versa; men and women killing each other in the most brutal ways imaginable; and perhaps the strangest part of all: No one appears to be doing anything t
o protect themselves. No one runs, no one hides. They just stand in plain view, without seeking cover, as they slaughter each other.”

  As Paulson spoke, the cameraman focused on an adolescent girl as she repeatedly stabbed an old woman with a short sharp object. The blood of the old woman, as she struggled to remain on her feet, made it impossible to be sure what the weapon was. As the camera pulled back, a man jumped from an adjacent building, coming down head-first onto the pavement.

  Paulson paused in stunned silence and then fought to continue. “The melee appears to have begun about twelve minutes ago, when sirens were heard throughout the city as police, fire, and emergency medical teams responded to reports of random violence. Immediately following that, the sound of gunfire began and still continues sporadically. As you can see out our window, the sky is beginning to fill with smoke from hundreds of fires that have sprung up all over the city as savagery rules the streets.

  “Here at the WNN offices, we have sealed ourselves in, locking security doors and terminating all elevator access to the two floors—” James Paulson abruptly stopped and looked somewhere off-camera, behind the camera operator. His right eyebrow raised in apprehension. His eyes shifted about the room. Something was obviously happening in the office, but Paulson didn’t seem to know exactly what.

  Stan McKay, watching the monitor in London, twisted and turned in his seat, instinctively looking at the screen from different angles hoping to get a better view, though logic told him it really wouldn’t change his perspective of the office. The look on Paulson’s face went from apprehension to sheer terror, and a moment later, to a menacing grin. The picture tumbled as the camera dropped and the screen went blank.