on her shoulder.
'Never know what satellite imaging shows,' Rayford said. 'We could be sleeping soundly while GC Security and Intelligence forces snap our pictures from the stratosphere.'
'Let me get these two to bed somewhere,' she said, 'before I collapse.'
'I've moved furniture in my day,' Leah said, slowly rising. 'Where are these beds and where do we put them?'
'I wish I could help,' Chaim said through clenched teeth, his jaw still wired shut.
Rayford stopped him with a gesture. 'If you're staying with us, sir, you answer to me. We need you and Buck as healthy as you can be.'
'And I need you alert for study,' Tsion said. 'You made me cram for enough exams. Now you're in for the crash course of your life.'
Rayford, Chloe, Leah, and Tsion spent half an hour moving beds up the elevator to makeshift quarters in an inner corridor on the twenty-fifth floor. By the time Rayford gingerly boarded the chopper balanced precariously on what served as the new roof of the tower, everyone was asleep save Tsion. The rabbi seemed to gain a second wind, and Rayford wasn't sure why.
Rayford left the instrument panel lights off and, of course, the outside lights. He fired up the rotors but waited to lift off until his eyes had adjusted to the darkness. The copter had but ten feet of clearance on each side. Little was trickier-especially to a fixed-wing expert like Rayford-than the shifting currents inside what amounted to a cavernous smokestack. Rayford had seen choppers crash in wide-open spaces after merely hovering too long in one place. Mac McCullum had tried to explain the physics of it, but Rayford had not listened closely enough to grasp it. Something about the rotors sucking up air from beneath the craft, leaving it no buoyancy. By the time the pilot realized he was dropping through dead air of his own making, he had destroyed the equipment and often killed all on board.
Rayford needed sleep as much as any of his charges, but he had to go get Albie. There was more to that too, of course. He could have called his friend and told him to lie low till the following evening. But Albie was new to the country and would have to fend for himself outside or bluff his way into a hotel. With Carpathia resurrected and the GC naturally on heightened alert, who knew how long he could pull off impersonating a GC officer?
Anyway, Rayford had to know whether Albie was 'with him or agin him,' as his father used to say. He had been thrilled to see the mark of the believer on Albie's forehead, but much of what the man had done in the predawn hours confused Rayford and made him wonder. A wily, streetwise man like Albie-one who had provided so much at high risk to himself-would be the worst kind of opponent. Rayford worried that he had unwittingly led the Tribulation Force into the lair of the enemy.
As the chopper rumbled through the shaft at the top of the tower, Rayford held his breath. He had carefully set the craft as close to the middle of the space as he could, allowing him to use one corner for his guide as he rose. If he kept the whirring blades equidistant from the walls in the one corner, he should be centered until free of the building.
How vulnerable and conspicuous could a man feel? He imagined David Hassid having miscalculated, trusting old information, not realizing that the GC itself knew Chicago was safe-not off-limits due to radiation. Rayford himself had overheard Carpathia say he had not used radiation on the city, at least initially. He wondered if the GC had planted such information just to lure in the insurgents and have them where they wanted them-in one place for easy dispatch.
With his helicopter free of the tower, Rayford still dared not engage the lights. He would stay low, hopefully beneath radar. He wanted to be invisible to satellite surveillance photography as well, but heat sensing had been so refined that the dark whirlybird would glow orange on a monitor.
A chill ran up his back as he let his imagination run. Was he being followed by a half dozen craft just like his own? He wouldn't hear or see them. They could have waited nearby, even on the ground. How would he know?
Since when did he manufacture trouble? There was enough real danger without concocting more.
Rayford set the instrument panel lights at their lowest level and quickly saw he was off course. It was an easy fix, but so much for trusting his brain, even in a ship like this. Mac had once told him that piloting a helicopter was to flying a 747 as riding a bike was to driving a sport utility vehicle. From that Rayford assumed that he would do more work by the seat of his pants than by marrying himself to the instrument panel. But neither had he planned on flying blind over a deserted megalopolis in wee-hour blackness. He had to get to Kankakee, pick up Albie, and get back to the tower before sunup. He had not a minute to spare. The last thing he wanted was to be seen over a restricted area in broad daylight. Detected in the dead of night was one thing. He would take his chances, trust his instincts. But there would be no hiding under the sun, and he would die before he would lead anyone to the new safe house.
In New Babylon frustrated supplicants had formed a new line, several thousand long, outside the Global Community Palace. GC guards traversed the length of it, telling people that the resurrected potentate would have to leave the courtyard when he had finished greeting those who happened to be in the right place at the right time.
David detoured from his route to Medical Services to hear the response of the crowd. They did not move, did not disperse. The guards, their bullhorned messages ignored, finally stopped to listen. David, looking puzzled, pulled up behind one of the jeeps, and a guard shrugged as if as dumbfounded as Director Hassid. The guard with the loudspeaker said, 'Suit yourselves, but this is an exercise in futility.'
'We have another idea!' shouted a man with a Hispanic accent.
'I'm listening,' the guard said, as the crowd near him quieted.
'We will worship the statue!' he said, and hundreds in line cheered.
'What did he say? What did he say?' The question raced down the line in both directions.
'Did not Supreme Commander Fortunato say we should do that?' the man said.
'Where are you from, my friend?' the guard asked, admiration in his voice.
'Mejico!' the man shouted in his native tongue, and many with him exulted.
'You have the heart of the toreador!' the guard said. 'Let me check on it!'
The news spread as the guard settled in his seat and talked into his phone. Suddenly he stood and gave the man a thumbs-up. 'You have been cleared to worship the image of His Excellency, the risen potentate!'
The crowd cheered.
'In fact, your leaders consider it a capital idea!'
The crowd sang and chanted, edging closer and closer to the courtyard.
'Please maintain order!' the guard urged. 'It will be more than an hour before you will be allowed in. But you will get your wish!'
David shook his head as he executed a huge U-turn and headed to the courtyard. People along the way called out to him. 'Is it true? May we at least worship the statue?'
David ignored most of them, but when clusters moved in front of his speeding cart, he was forced to brake before slipping around them. Occasionally he nodded, to their delight. They ran to get in a line that already ' stretched more than a quarter mile. Would this day ever end?
TWO
Rayford mentally kicked himself. He had vastly underestimated the time and his ability to pick up Albie, settle on the disposition of both the fighter jet and the Gulf-stream, and get back to the new safe house before sunrise. The sun was already toying with the horizon. He patted his pants pocket for his phone. He felt for it in his flight bag, his jacket, on the floor.
He wanted to swear, but since coming to his senses just days before, Rayford acknowledged that he needed a return to discipline. He had learned from an old friend in college something he had then rejected as too esoteric and way too touchy-feely. His broad-minded friend had called it his 'opposite trigger' mode, and while in it, he forced himself to respond in ways diametrically opposed to how he felt. If he wanted to shout, he whispered. If he wanted to smack someone, he gently caressed his or her shoulder.
