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AlexLindsey.com
Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: Crooked Creek Publishing
ISBN-10: 0991517806
Type: Fiction
Pages: 244
Copyright: Feb 19, 2014
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
A non-stop, globe-sweeping, Christian End Times thriller that reaches back to ancient Sumeria to set the stage for the ultimate conflict in the very near future.
Full of twists and turns, romance, and real-world backdrops. The reader is taken from chase scenes in Rome to survival in the Colorado Rockies and exploration beneath the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, World events that serve as a backdrop for the story include:
- The emergence of a new political leader that is backed by the world’s most powerful religious leader.
- An order comprised of the world’s elite, with roots in antiquity, has started maneuvering out in the open.
- A top-secret weapon of enormous power has been stolen from a government lab.
- A cartel of the world’s largest banking families has made the European Union an offer it can’t refuse.
The paths of FBI agent Brooke Decker and CIA agent Dillon Knowles cross while investigating different aspects of the same world events. They soon realize that they must work together to thwart an ancient plan for world domination - and to keep each other alive.
Excerpt
Chapter 1: The Chamber
Rome, Italy
The chamber was dark and musty and lit only by torches mounted on the wall. Everything was meant to preserve the rituals and vision of so many that had gone before. Even the robes they wore dated back hundreds of years. Thirteen of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world were gathered in secrecy to usher in the end of an age, and the beginning of another. They mostly represented the world’s banking elite, but their influence also extended to international corporations, governments, mass media, religions, and virtually every aspect of human life.
The chamber was almost forty feet below street level, and was chiseled out of solid rock. Above it was a crypt, also chiseled out of the natural rock, and above that was a church. Although the church was located in Rome, home to many ostentatious churches, this one was plain looking and modest in size. It was located across the Tiber River from the more popular tourist attractions, and it had one other thing to help discourage visitors besides its humble appearance. The crypt below it contained over 4,000 bones from church friars who had died over the course of several centuries. The bones were arranged in different ways, some sorted by bone type, some part of complete skeletons. But one particular pile of bones was subtly attached to a secret panel on the side of the crypt. This panel swung inward into a descending passage that led to the subterranean chamber where the men now stood.
Only thirteen members were to ever know about this chamber at any given time. If someone else were to find out, it would be their death sentence. The thirteen, which called themselves a council, had met every year at the summer solstice for countless generations. When one died, it was from his blood line that his replacement was chosen. They represented twelve pure blood lines, and one composite. The composite bloodline represented the commingling of the other twelve with no pure component of its own. It had always been planned this way, for it was from this thirteenth bloodline that one would be born to rule the others, and the world. This was the bloodline of the Anointed One.
The chamber made a low rustling sound, almost a hiss, as air was drawn through a naturally occurring fissure in the rock. As the air passed through, it made the torches sputter and flicker, intermittently illuminating the many symbols etched on the chamber walls. In this erratic light shown the symbols of consistency. These ancient symbols had pointed towards the future for many millennia, and had helped articulate the plan when it was brought out of ancient Sumer. These were the symbols that had assured continuity during the time of confusion after Babel, and had augmented the oral tradition during periods when written words were lost. These symbols told how one day their labors would come to fruition - the keystone would be fit to the arch, the capstone to the pyramid, and the Anointed One would take his place as the rightful ruler of the world.
Washington D.C.
Brooke Decker, Special Agent with the FBI’s Counter-Terrorism Unit, sat in her Washington D.C. office and watched eighteen months of hard work go up in a spectacular fireball over the Florida Everglades. She was watching the video from last night’s disaster where a drug smuggler’s plane, carrying four suspected Iranian terrorists, overflew a makeshift runway and slammed into a line of trees.
Brooke had worked hard to insert an agent into the drug cartel’s supply route, and another one in a terrorist training camp in Venezuela. While he was still alive, Hugo Chavez had allowed Hezbollah to establish the training camp just South of San Cristobal, near the Colombian border. According to Brooke’s informant, the camp specialized in training agents to conduct biological warfare.
They tracked the Iranians after they finished their training and left the camp. They hiked over the border into Columbia, where they were trucked to the coast of Cartagena to board a fishing trawler headed for Roatan, Honduras. The Intel Brooke had been given was that the Iranians did not have the biological agent with them. It would be delivered by their contact in the U.S. Finding that contact was imperative, and tracking the Iranians was the only lead they had.
A plane, owned and piloted by a Colombian drug cartel, picked up the four Iranians on Roatan, and a chase plane had intercepted it twenty minutes later. Brooke replayed the last five minutes of a video that was taken from an infrared camera mounted under the nose of the chase plane. The chase plane was flying fifteen miles behind and a half-mile above the smuggler’s plane, but even at this range, the camera was able to zoom in to the point where the plane in front filled the entire image. Brooke turned up the volume of the recorded audio, and listened to the voices of the crew on the chase plane.
“…. in a little closer?” It was the Mission Commander speaking. The image of the aircraft on Brooke’s video expanded to fill the monitor. “Wait. Zoom out again,” the commander said.
Brooke, who was seeing on the recording what the crew had seen in real-time, thought she had seen something flicker ahead of the aircraft, just before the operator had zoomed in. As the operator zoomed back out in response to the commander, more of the ground could be seen in front of and below the plane ahead. Yes, she could see what the commander must have seen. There were half-dozen small flickering lights arranged in two parallel lines. These were firepots that the smuggler’s counterparts on the ground were using to light a makeshift runway. The Iranians’ contact would be among those on the ground.
“Tell the intercept guys we have the landing zone," the commander said, “Can you project the GPS coordinates of those lights?”
A moment passed and then Brooke heard “Wait, what’s happening?” It was the commander’s voice again, and he sounded alarmed.
Brooke watched the video as one by one the flickering lights started to go out. “They must have made us," the commander said, “They must have had a spotter somewhere on the coast. We’re way too far back for those guys on the ground to have heard us.”
“Alert intercept we’ve got a problem," the commander said. In the video, Brooke could still see the infrared image of the smuggler’s aircraft, but now with the firepots extinguished the pilot in front was landing in pitch blackness.
“I doubt he’s got enough fuel to make it to another landing spot.” This time it was the voice of one of the operators.
Brooke watched as the smuggler’s plane seemed to continue on its original descent, but with the aid of the infrared camera she could see that it was going to overshoot the runway. When the plane was almost half way along the original 'firepot' runway, it was still over 50 feet off the ground. Just then, the pilot turned on his landing lights which showed up in an eerie green on the video. The pilot had probably been given strict orders not to use his lights, to avoid drawing attention to the rendezvous site. He evidently had come to the realization of that now being the least of his worries.
The sudden brilliance of the landing lights illuminated a stand of trees directly in the path of the plane. The pilot immediately attempted to pull up, but it was too late. A section of the right wing was the first part of the plane to strike the trees, and as it disintegrated, it spun the plane in a clockwise direction. The left wing hit next and collapsed against the fuselage. Suddenly, the infrared image went bright as the automatic gain control of the camera tried to adjust for the blinding fireball. As the chase plane continued over the site, it had to veer to the left to avoid the fireball rising high into the air. The swamp was illuminated for several hundred yards in all directions, but no one on the ground could be seen.
Rome, Italy
Peter Romanov approached an old rostrum, blackened with age, that stood in the middle of a circular platform. He wore a hemmed robe and a ceremonial headpiece like the others, but the sash of his robe differed in color to represent a different bloodline; as did the sashes of the others. His wire-rimmed glasses were the only thing that betrayed the illusion that this was a medieval event. In his late 70’s, Romanov’s 5’9” frame was not imposing, but his eyes showed a raw intelligence and an occasional predatory outlook towards the world and those around him. The fitful flare from the torches, reflecting in the lenses of his glasses, gave the illusion that his eyes were aflame.
The twelve men, gathered around the circular platform, were accustomed to limousines, countless servants, and the finest things the world had to offer, but they came here each year as peers in a solemn oath. Each one was born, raised, educated, tested, and enabled for one thing – to rule. Today they would anoint one among them who was born to rule them all.
Romanov opened the proceeding with a Latin phrase, even though some of their rituals reached back to early Mesopotamia and were conducted in languages that haven’t been heard for millennia. “Ab origine ad alta a posse ad esse…. from the origin to the summit and from possibility to actuality," he began, and then switched to English which was the common language to everyone present. “My brothers, countless generations reaching back to antiquity have worked for and longed for this day. Their efforts have not been in vain. The days of those that might have stopped us have long since passed.
As you well know, we have complete control of the Earth’s finances, along with every major media outlet. No war can be waged without our support. We have eyes in every level of government in every nation of the world. All State secrets are fully known to us. We create controversy on all levels and in the confusion we accomplish our will without hindrance. Both liberals and conservatives alike serve our purposes. We can send the militaries of America and Europe wherever we like and whenever we like. We can cut off credit to America and collapse the Chinese economy. We are in full control of Russia’s political and economic systems.
Truly no nation or group of nations can defeat us. Yet one thing still remains to be captured in this war for the hearts, minds, and souls of the world. Humans still need to worship something larger than them. They still harbor that ancient need to worship a god or gods, and they still need a religion to tell them how to do this. So just like we usurped the governments and militaries and economies of the world, we will arrogate their religions and give them their god. We will give them a single god with indisputable power, and a single religion to point the way.”
Romanov then paused, his eyeglasses reflecting the flames. When he began again his tone was of quiet resolve. “We are here to undertake a truly monumental task - the anointing of the promised one. But make no mistake. Just like sacrifice was required in the oral law that Moses received from the Sinai and delivered to Joshua, and Joshua to the Elders, and the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets to the Men of the Great Synagogue,” he paused for a moment and then continued with a more troubled expression, “a pure blood sacrifice is also required of the true Prophet, and where is pure blood to be found but in the blood of the prophet himself?” Romanov’s question was rhetorical since everyone present already knew the answer. The anointing required a sacrifice - a blood sacrifice. The blood that flowed could not be the life blood of the Prophet himself, for he was to be a living sacrifice. The pure blood must come from his offspring.
As Romanov continued, Benjamin Rasmussen stood in front of the Rostrum, opposite of Romanov, with the other eleven surrounding the circular platform. He thought to himself how ironic it was that he, the one to take on the mantle, the one to bring peace to the world, didn’t actually believe in a monotheistic god or one true religion. He instead ascribed to a Divine Wisdom that, to his way of thinking, was the foundation stone upon which the regenerating and saving portion of every true religion was based. He was Jewish through and through, and his lineage was traceable back to King David and Solomon, but the role he had agreed to play had been more influenced by the traditions of his more recent ancestors’ Kabbalah than the teachings of the Torah. Rasmussen held the conviction that man himself was god’s presence in the universe, and therefore had god-like responsibility to take the action necessary to further the human race.
As Romanov concluded, he looked directly at Rasmussen. “Now, as is required by the receiving tradition of our enlightenment, this covenant must be sealed with the anointed blood itself.” As he spoke this, the recessed panel leading to the crypt above opened, and a young girl of nine or ten years of age was forced into the chamber by a large muscular man with a black goatee and a jagged scar over his left eye. The man had the dead black eyes of a shark, which showed neither contempt nor pity for the girl. The girl was dressed in a simple white cotton gown, with hands bound in front of her. Her mouth was muffled with a swath of cotton linen, and she was blindfolded in a similar fashion. Her rapid breathing and stiff movements revealed her obvious terror as the man forced her onto a stepped platform beside the rostrum. Blood from the thirteenth bloodline also ran in her veins, but her blood sacrifice would please no god this day. Instead it would break whatever was left of the human heart in the “Anointed One”. It would, however, serve one very important purpose. It would brace the man for the tasks ahead, and he would need that resolve to dispense justice as he deemed necessary. He had been called to take the lives of billions, if required, and to change or erase the borders of nations. He was called to usher in the New Age.
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