"That's correct, sir."

Marsden looked at Delroy. "According to what I understood from Captain Falkirk's rather cryptic message, you think you have an explanation for those disappearances."

Delroy hesitated. hadn't Falkirk admitted he had the same theory? Maybe the captain wouldn't have wanted to transmit such a message. Or maybe he didn't want to stick his neck out. Guilt rattled through Delroy over that one. Even if Falkirk hadn't mentioned that he believed what Delroy had come to say, the captain had stuck his neck out all the same by making certain his chaplain got there to say it.

"Aye, sir. But it's not just an explanation, sir. I believe I have the answer, sir."

Cranston's eyes narrowed. "Chaplain, I have to admit that I have a hard time believing that you have the answer. We've been talking to NASA scientists, military think tanks, and gentlemen in the National Security Agency about a number of possibilities that could have caused the mass disappearances around the world. If you can come up with an answer they haven't thought of... well, sir, then my hat's off to you."

Delroy took a sip of breath, feeling as though the room had suddenly constricted on him. He wanted to believe, truly he did. But the image of Terry's casket, the unconscionable grave at Marbury, Alabama, in the family plot where Josiah Harte rested, ran through his mind. It had been raining the day they had laid his son to rest.

"The people who disappeared," he said in a quiet voice, "were Raptured." He wanted to continue, to pour passion into his words, but he couldn't. His throat seemed to dry up and the words just stopped.

Cranston regarded Delroy with a flat gaze. "Raptured?"

"Aye, sir."

"Do you want to explain that term, Chaplain?"

Delroy started to speak and couldn't get the words out for a moment. He cleared his throat and tried again. "They were taken by God, sir.

"Taken by God." Cranston's disbelief was obvious in the hollow tone of his voice, his words driving home like nails in a coffin. He unsheathed the steel of authority when he spoke again. "Did I hear you right, Chaplain?"

"Aye, sir." Delroy sat quietly, aware of how his heart thudded inside his chest.

Cranston glanced down at the legal pad in front of him. "Chaplain Harte, you flew practically nonstop from the Mediterranean, from a ship that is involved in a major military engagement, to bring us that story?"

Delroy had to force his voice out. "Aye, sir." "And you told your captain this?"

"I did, sir."

Cranston turned to Marsden. "Do you know Captain Falkirk, David?" Marsden kept staring at Delroy. "Yes. I do. I consider him a very good and very valuable friend."

Cranston shook his head. "Then I must admit, General, that I am confused. I know you must trust him and his judgment, otherwise you would never have wasted my time by calling me here."

"I do trust his judgment," Marsden said. "Captain Falkirk speaks highly of Chaplain Harte. The chaplain has had a long and distinguished career with the Navy."

The words crashed into Delroy's mind. For the first time he realized his career was at stake today. And he had brought them the story of the Rapture, something that he had no way of proving. Perspiration poured down his face despite the room's cool temperature. Had he ever truly believed that? And why?

The mocking voice from the plane tore into his thoughts and wrecked his concentration. "Because a lot of people turned up missing sixteen-plus hours ago and you don't have an answer? Oh, man, if you can't explain it, if things don't go the way you want them to, it must be God. Are ignorance and fear and a need for some kind of immortality what it takes to make you a believer, Chaplain Harte?"

Cranston drew lines on the legal pad. "Not to be disrespectful, General, but maybe this should have been a navy matter."

Marsden spoke in a flat voice but didn't take his eyes from Delroy. "General, as you'll recall, Admiral Royce is among the missing. In this matter, I didn't want a stand-in. I wanted us."

Cranston looked at Marsden, then at Mayweather. "Why us?"

"Because we represent a major bloc within the joint chiefs, General," Mayweather said in his honey-soft voice. "When the three of us speak together on something, people listen."

"We don't agree on a lot of things," Cranston said. "The case in point is the situation we need to take regarding Russia."

"We don't know that Russia is behind the attacks that eliminated so much of our population," Marsden said.

"That's bull," Cranston said. "It can't be anyone else. No one else has the technology."

"You know," Mayweather said in a patient father's voice, "that's what Russia is saying about us. That we must be behind the disappearances."

Cranston waved the subject away. "That's just a smoke screen they're broadcasting to the rest of the world."

"They say that's our tactic," Marsden pointed out. "President Fitzhugh's declaration to the American people this morning that we would find out who attacked the United States so savagely and punish those responsible wasn't even a thinly veiled threat."

"Come on, General," Cranston flared. "After what the Soviets did to the Israelis in that surprise attack fourteen months ago, how can you even doubt that Russia is behind this?"

Marsden glanced at Mayweather, then sipped from a glass of water.

Mayweather leaned back in his chair, obviously taking a very smooth handoff. Delroy doubted Cranston caught the transition. The two older generals reminded Delroy of two older deacons in Josiah Harte's church who outmaneuvered the up-and-coming firebrands by double-teaming them so quietly they were never noticed.

"You know, General Cranston, you're something of an accomplished tactician," Mayweather said.

Delroy knew that was definitely an understatement. Shortly after the Russian attack on Israel and after Chaim Rosenzweig's introduction of the chemical fertilizer that had revolutionized Israel's place in the Middle East, Cranston had been the man to go to for the answers regarding questions about those countries. Cranston had helped negotiate the fragile peace that had existed till the Russian attack, then had helped put the conflicts back into perspective after that attack to maintain another brief period of bloodless unrest-until the Syrians had attacked Turkey.

"The accepted view of the failure of the Russian attack on Israel was because they used planes that were falling apart," Mayweather said. "Do you really think they would have launched an attack that was doomed to fail if they had a weapon waiting in the wings that could vaporize a third of the world's population?"

Cranston remained quiet.

"The Russian military lost a lot of men and machines in that debacle, Todd," Marsden observed quietly. "Men and machines they could have used to defend themselves in case the United States or Great Britain or anyone else decided to retaliate."

"Besides that," Mayweather put in, "if I had a weapon that had made a third of the world's population disappear in a heartbeat, I think I'd be threatening to use it again instead of denying I had it. The Russians showed no mercy in their attempted attack on Israel. Why would you think they would deny possession of a weapon of mass destruction that worked on a magnitude this great?"

"And American weapon development has run in tandem to Russian research," Marsden said. "They got ahead of us with Sputnik, but they paid the price for that because they focused the American nation's need to get into the space race instead of allowing the Russians to get there first. We've never been behind them since."

"Do you think the Russians could invent something we haven't already had on the drawing boards?" Mayweather asked.

Delroy appreciated the way the two older generals worked. They were smooth as hand-varnished wood, and they had put the walls around the younger general with accomplished ease.

Someone knocked on the door. The lance corporal crossed the room and opened the door. A quiet, quick conversation ensued.

When the lance corporal stepped back inside the room, a young Air Force colonel accompanied him. The colonel saluted sharply, feet tight together like he was on parade.

"Colonel Emerson Carter, General Marsden."

"Colonel." Marsden leaned back in his chair. "Obviously you're here on some matter of concern. Otherwise you would not have interrupted a private meeting."

"No, sir," the colonel said. "General King said I was to get a message to you at once, sir. There's a story breaking on FOX that General Farley thought you might want to see, sir."

Delroy placed the name after a moment. The only General Farley the chaplain knew of was General Hamilton Farley, who was in command of the NORAD base at Cheyenne Mountain. Cold fear stabbed through Delroy's heart.

The world was at DEFCON 2, perched at the edge of now and never. Giant airplanes hung like hunting hawks over cities around the world, their bellies filled with nuclear death. Ohio-class and Typhoon-class submarines glided through the oceans of the world, already in position to attack key sites in Russia, Korea, and China. All of those engines of destruction were cutting-edge, built with firststrike capability and armed with nuclear warheads that were designated city killers and could earn that sobriquet in one searing blast.

Marsden punched a button on a keypad built into the conference table. A cube of television screens lowered from a recessed spot in the ceiling. The screens quickly changed to the FOX station.

"-here just outside of Gdansk, Poland," a young reporter spoke into a microphone. "Nobody knows what brought the plane down in this wheat field outside the small city, but speculation exists that there was an aerial battle between American and Russian fighter jets."

The camera view locked in on the raging fire clinging to the unmistakable skeletal shape of a fighter jet. Several emergency vehicles ringed the area. Uniformed men with flashlights worked to keep the small crowds back.

"Will, do we know whether the aircraft was American or Russian?" someone off-camera asked.

The reporter brought the microphone back up to his face. He wore a coat and went bareheaded. He squinted against the wind. "No, Bert. As yet the local authorities haven't gotten close enough to make any kind of identification. Local residents that I've talked to said that they saw streaks that might have been machine gun fire and-"

"When did this happen?" Marsden asked.

Colonel Carter didn't even check his watch. The time stamp was posted on the television program. "Seven minutes ago, General."

"And whose plane is this?"

"One of ours, sir."

Marsden looked at the television screen. "What happened?"

"That plane was a flanker on Bronze Eagle."

Delroy didn't know what Bronze Eagle was, but since the fighter jet was close to Russia, an educated guess told him that the code name was for one of the B-52s put into the air for first-strike capability against Russia.

"The pilot of that aircraft judged that a Russian MiG got too close. Command agreed. The pilot was under clearance to fire a few warning rounds to turn the MiG away. Instead, our pilot was shot down."

"What happened to our pilot?" Marsden asked.

"Dead on impact, sir. There was no seat ejection."

Another young man lost, Delroy couldn't help thinking. He thought of the black coffin Terry had been buried in, thought of the way his wife had taken the flag folded into a tight triangle.

"Of course," Cranston said, "the Russians will say that we reacted in a hostile manner first." He leaned forward on his elbows, his hands wrapped together. "With the jet in Gdansk, not far from the Russian border, that may sell in the public view."

Marsden turned to the Air Force officer. "Was there anything else, Colonel?"

"No, sir."

"You'll keep me apprised of this development? And any others that may happen?"

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you, Colonel. You're dismissed.

With a final salute, Colonel Carter turned on his heel and marched for the door.

Marsden pressed the keypad again, and the television cube disappeared into the ceiling.

"After this," Cranston mused as he watched the screens recede, "the Russians will be in a perfect position to start putting more pressure behind their demands that we give their people back."

"Give their people back?" Delroy didn't realize he was speaking until the words were already out.

"Yes, Chaplain," Cranston said in a hard voice. "The Russians claim we kidnapped their people."

"What about the rest of the people in the world?" Delroy was flabbergasted.

"They don't care about the people missing from other countries," Cranston said.

"What about the people we're missing?"

"They don't believe what they see on television. They think this is all a production. A Hollywood special-effects presentation."

"That's insane," Delroy said.

"Is it, Chaplain?" Cranston sounded sarcastic. "I wouldn't know. Of course, I might mention that people telling me God Raptured the world and took all the believers to heaven sounds insane as well."

Delroy sank back in his chair.

"Unless you can convince me otherwise, Chaplain?" Cranston said. "Maybe you want to trot out your belief for all of us to see." Delroy tried to speak but didn't know where to begin. What was wrong with him? Why had he come all this way just to sit here like this?

"A message of faith then, Chaplain?" Cranston said. Face burning, Delroy remained silent.

"Come now, Chaplain Harte," Cranston said. "Surely after the distance you've come with Captain Falkirk's blessing, you can reveal to us your personal visions or prophecies."

"Todd," Marsden said in mild rebuke.

"This man didn't come here to be ridiculed," Mayweather said. "No," Cranston agreed in a harsh voice. "I'm sure he didn't. But I will tell you this: if he was in my command, I'd have him up on charges of dereliction of duty."

Heaviness filled Delroy's limbs. He felt like he'd been beaten. "Nothing to say, Chaplain?" Cranston asked.

"No, sir." The answer was dragged from Delroy only by years of training and discipline.

"Then I suggest we call an end to this," Cranston suggested.

"With a downed plane in Poland and the Russians hysterical over it, I think we've got more pressing business to attend to." "Chaplain?" Marsden looked hopeful. "Aye, sir?"

"Was there anything else you wanted to say?"

Delroy hesitated. He searched his mind for the fire he'd felt back on the Wasp. But he couldn't think of a single thing. "No, sir." Marsden seemed to sag in his chair. "You're dismissed, Chaplain Harte. "

"Thank you, General." Wearily, Delroy stood, put his hat on, saluted, and turned on his heel. He walked toward the door in total, agonizing defeat.

Turkish-Syrian Border 40 Klicks South of Sanliurfa, Turkey Local Time 0153 Hours Goose stood in the darkness at the front of the Hummer. Clouds and dust obscured the stars, and he gave silent thanks for that. If there were any Syrian scouts around that the Ranger perimeter teams hadn't been able to find, the darkness would help cover the fact that the first wave of the retreat was going to start in minutes. Most of the wounded had been loaded an hour ago.

Below in the stream, the final wave of men was finishing up with the chaplains and Corporal Joseph Baker, who had not once stepped from the stream. The big man had at times taken brief respites from the baptisms, during which he had conferred with people he had pulled from the water.

The men held torches they'd made from materials salvaged from supplies that were going to be left behind. The torches flickered in the slow, soft breeze that had turned cold as soon as the sun had gone down. The land was giving up its heat now, and Goose knew from experience that a chill would fill the harsh terrain before morning.

Goose had set himself up on perimeter watch. Movement on patrol helped him work through the anxiety that crashed through him as he wondered how the night's preparations for the evac were going.