onto Dalton’s laptop. It had that ghostly, pale-green night-vision look, but the high-definition processor was doing its job and the detail was surprisingly clear. “And keep your eyes on that screen.”
“DAMMIT,” Matt hissed. “We’ve lost him.”
His eyes scoured the concourse around him. Ogilvy had vanished into the crowd.
“The network,” Gracie blurted. “Maybe they wrangled a suite here. Maybe that’s how they brought the transmitter in.”
“Makes sense. But how do we find out where it is? I didn’t see any guest lists. It’s all a big mess in here.”
They also had another problem. There were two banks of suites on level two, but they were at opposite ends of the stadium. One was to the east, facing the Astrodome. The other faced west. Getting across from one to the other meant they’d have to get through another human swamp.
“We won’t have time to check both banks,” Gracie said.
Just then, the music changed into a deep, heraldic burst of brass and the lights across the stadium dimmed again. The crowd hushed to a bone-chilling silence. The air was thick with nervous expectation. And Darby reappeared on stage, welcomed by a thunderous uproar. He milked it for almost a minute before raising a calming hand and asking the crowd, “Are you ready?”
The answer was a thunderous “Yes.”
“My fellow children of Christ, please give a warm Houston welcome and open your hearts to our special guest, Father Jerome.” Every single person in the stadium was standing up, clapping and cheering rapturously as the slight figure of Father Jerome appeared. He looked unimaginably small on the huge stage, shuffling forward slowly, looking around at the crowd in awe, dwarfed by his own image on the overhead video displays. A blinding fusillade of flashbulbs accompanied him as he padded across to the center of the stage and gave Darby a small, courteous bow. Darby ushered him over to a microphone stand and waved him on before retreating a few steps into the shadows.
Matt and Gracie stood there, rooted to the floor, transfixed by the crowd’s reaction. The entire stadium reverberated with an air of majesty. Gracie watched the close-up of Father Jerome’s face on the screens. He was looking up, taking in the scene, clearly overwhelmed by the sheer scale of it all. Droplets of sweat were sliding down his forehead. He didn’t seem to know what to say. The whole crowd was on its feet and just stood there, silent, hanging on what God’s messenger would proclaim. He cleared his throat with a small cough, looking around slightly fearfully—and then his expression changed, as if he’d been mildly startled by something. He cocked his head a little and his eyes blinked, then he swallowed and said, “Thank you all for being here and for welcoming me here tonight.”
The crowd responded exuberantly with “Amens” and applause.
As Father Jerome embarked on his sermon down below, an idea burst through the chaos in Matt’s mind. “I need to call Rydell,” he told Gracie. “Quick.”
Gracie had Dalton’s cell phone with her. Rydell still had his. She speed-dialed him and passed the phone to Matt.
RYDELL PICKED UP on the first ring.
“Do you have the skycam up?” Matt asked, his tone urgent.
Rydell was eyeing the screen on Dalton’s laptop closely. “It’s over the medical center, just north of here,” he informed him. “Nothing so far.”
“What happens to its video downlink if it crosses into the transmitter’s signal?” Matt asked breathlessly.
“It would interrupt it, for sure,” Rydell speculated.
“It wouldn’t mess it up so it couldn’t fly, would it?”
Rydell thought about it for a beat, then said, “It might. The laser signal could override the signal from the skycam’s remote controller. We could lose control of it while it’s in the beam’s path. Might fry it altogether.”
Dalton flashed him a concerned look.
Matt’s voice shot back. “We’ve got to risk it. Send it over to us, inside the stadium. It’s the only way we’re going to find out where their signal’s coming from.”
“Okay,” Rydell said, spinning a finger horizontally in the air to Dalton and gesturing at the stadium. “Let’s just hope it gets there in one piece.” He turned to Dalton, and told him, “We’re going in.”
Dalton used the screen to guide him and fingered the joysticks to turn the black skycam around. Rydell was huddled behind him, his attention riveted to the screen. As Dalton banked the Draganflyer around, he flinched and exclaimed, “Did you see that?” He jabbed a finger at the screen, but the Draganflyer was zooming back and whatever he was pointing at was gone.
“What?” Dalton asked.
“There was something, back there.” He pointed at the top left-hand corner of the screen. “On the roof. Can you flip the camera around so it’s pointing backward?”
Dalton’s face was tight with concentration as his fingers made micro-adjustments to the joysticks. “Can’t do a full one-eighty, it’s just a forward sweep. I can spin it around and fly it backward, but it’s gonna reach the stadium any second now and I don’t want to risk it and fly blind.”
Rydell frowned and nodded. “Okay, keep going. We’ll come back to it.”
“If it’s still flying by then,” Dalton worried.
MATT AND GRACIE scanned the rectangular opening of black sky and waited as Father Jerome finished his sermon.
“Matt, he’s doing it,” she told him, pointing at the stage.
Matt looked down, the cell phone still on his ear. “Come on, guys.”
“It’s almost there,” Rydell said, clearly tense.
Down on the stage, Father Jerome tilted his head back and slowly raised his arms outward from his sides until they were slightly above the horizontal, as if he were about to catch a massive beach ball. The crowd shuddered and all eyes turned to the empty air under the stadium’s open roof.
“Pray with me,” Father Jerome beseeched his followers. “Pray with me that God gives us a sign and guides our thoughts and helps us do his will.”
Murmurs rose and lips quivered across the stadium as the crowd started to pray. And then a gasp reverberated throughout the giant hall as a ball of light appeared over Father Jerome. It was small, perhaps eight or ten feet in diameter, a swirling, cloudy sphere of light. An upwelling of flashbulbs lit up the tiers as the apparition just floated there for a few seconds, then started to rise. It reached the halfway point between Father Jerome’s head and the stadium’s full height and held there for a moment, blazing to a twinkling backdrop of thousands of flashbulbs, then it flared out and expanded into the now-familiar, massive sphere of brilliance.
The crowd was cowed into a nervous silence as the sign rotated before them. Then, like a breaking wave, euphoria rolled across the arena and the crowd erupted into a mighty roar, bigger than anything any touchdown at the stadium had ever generated. Amid wailing “Amens” and “Hallelujahs,” the massed faithful waved their arms and hugged their cheeks in adulation and awe. People were crossing themselves. Some people fainted, others wailed hysterically. Most just stared in disbelief while tears of joy ran down their faces.
Matt’s skin tingled. It was the first time he’d seen it live, and its power blew him away. He had to keep reminding himself that it wasn’t supernatural. That it was Danny’s work. That his brother had played a crucial role in making it possible.
He could sense his presence. More than ever, he had to find him.
He looked up and hissed into the cell phone, “Where is it?”
“It’s in,” Rydell announced. “It just dropped in from the north face of the opening.”
