"LaHaye, Tim - Left Behind 11 - Armageddon" - читать интересную книгу автора (LaHaye Tim)
"What, you've got marks both places?"
Chloe waved her off and kept running. The truck veered off the road in front of her and stopped. Chloe swerved around it and kept going. She heard doors open-ing and boots on pavement. Soon armed GC in full uni-form flanked her, a man on each side, keeping pace.
"Okay," one said, "fun's over. Stop or we'll have to put you in the truck. Come on now, ma'am, you know we can take you down, and there's no need for that."
Chloe kept running. The man on her right tossed his weapon to the one on the left, and the next thing she knew he had both arms around her neck and was draw-ing his knees up into the middle of her back. He had to weigh two hundred pounds. She staggered and fell. He shifted his weight just before she hit the ground and drove her face into the dirt. Chloe knew she had been scraped deep, and blood ran down her forehead. He slid up and pressed his knee behind her neck, pulled her hands behind her, and handcuffed her.
Desperate to stall them, Chloe let herself go limp. "Have it your way," one of the men said. He grabbed the cuffs to drag her toward the truck. She purposely kept her face down, letting sand and pebbles and pave-ment tear at her face.
On her stomach next to the truck, she could not be lifted by the handcuffs without wrenching her shoulders out of place, which the GC almost did. "There's an easier way," a young guard said, "if that's what she wants."
He grabbed her feet and bent her legs up to where he could bind her ankles to the handcuffs with a plastic band. He tossed her into the truck.
Chloe was sure she had cracked a rib. During the twenty-five-minute ride to the local GC headquarters, Chloe began to pray. "God, give me strength. Let me die before I give away anything. Be with Kenny and Buck and Dad."
She remembered George regaling them with stories about how he had said absolutely nothing to his captors in Greece. If only she had that kind of fortitude. She would rather banter, anger them, mislead them. Was it better to sit and take it or to shoot back, to let them know she was no pushover?
Torture. Could she handle that? "With your strength, God. Let me trade my body for the ones I love."
At headquarters she was uncuffed, searched, and again asked her name and home region. Chloe said nothing. She gingerly pressed a palm against her face and felt the abrasions on her forehead and cheeks.
"She already told us. Phoebe Evangelista, American."
"Then there ought to be a -6 somewhere under that blood. Get a wet cloth and wash that off."
Someone held Chloe by the back of her head and dragged the cloth across her face. She cried out.
"I don't see anything. Doesn't mean it's not there. We running her name and description?"
"Yeah. Nothing so far."
"Jock will be in at nine. Get her cleaned up and in a jumpsuit. And fingerprinted."
Chloe was tempted to go limp again and make the GC undress her, hose her down, and dress her, but she did what she was told. She came out of the shower with her face stinging, changed into the dark green jumpsuit, and clenched her fists.
When she was led to the photo area and printing sta-tion, she kept her hands balled. Chloe looked so different from the girl who had been at Stanford six years before, she wasn't worried about her photo giving anything away.
A matronly Mexican guard reached for Chloe's hand and said, "Right first, please."
Chloe shook her head.
"Come on, honey. You don't want to fight me. You're going to get yourself fingerprinted, so you might as well just let me do it."
Chloe shook her head again.
The woman showed Chloe an ugly adjustable metal cord similar to the tool dogcatchers use at the ends of poles to snag puppies. "I wrap this about three inches above your wrist. When it tightens, your hand comes open. I don't know who you are or why you're in here, but you don't want to endure this."
Chloe shook her head again, and the woman spoke into her radio, asking for help. Chloe resisted the two young men, but as the matron had said, it was hardly worth the effort. When that metal loop tightened around her arm, her fingers popped open, and the GC had finger-prints that were sent via the Internet to their databases all over the world.
"We also read your eyes with the camera, honey. If you've ever had a driver's license, been to college, gotten married, anything, we'll find a match."
Chloe only hoped the GC were as shorthanded as everyone else. Maybe it would take long enough that Buck and George and the rest could bust her out. Who am I kidding?
Rayford had hoped for a day or two of rest before jetting back to San Diego, but he had no choice but to leave Petra as soon as he could refuel. He was stunned to find Mac McCullum waiting for him.
"Got the word from Buck," Mac said. "Thought Tsion and Chaim ought to know so they could get the folks here praying. Albie's already got a contact on the Al Hillah thing, so he doesn't need me. I'll be your pilot."
"Mac, I can't ask you to-"
"You didn't. I volunteered. Now unless you're gonna be a mule and pull rank on me, saddle up." Rayford was more grateful than he could express. In the air Mac told him, "You can think, pray, sleep, or talk. I've got this baby on a path to San Diego, and I'm looking forward to seeing those people again and meet-ing some new ones. My prediction is that Chloe will be there waiting for us."
"I was with you right up until that last," Rayford said. "I've got a bad, bad feeling about this. If Buck and George don't find her soon, or if they find out the GC has her, we've got to get those people out of there."
"And take them where?"
"Petra is the only place I know anymore."
"Chloe ain't gonna give the GC a thing. Unless they saw her coming out of the underground, what've they got?"
"She had to be in the area. Unless she can convince them she came from somewhere else, she sure gives them a place to start looking."
Rayford buried his head in his hands and tried to sleep. No dice. All he could do was pray. Chloe had been Daddy's girl from day one. She loved school, was inquisitive, single-minded, stubborn. She was the last person in the family to come to Christ, and Rayford had no illusions that he was responsible for that. He had taught her to believe only in what she could see and smell and touch.
Chloe always wanted to be in the middle of the action, and if someone wouldn't put her there, she'd put herself there. He wanted to resent her for it, especially now, but he was overwhelmed with worry and fear. All he wanted was to know she was safe and back with Buck and Kenny. He knew that no matter what happened, they would be reunited someday, and that it would be less than a year from now. But somehow that wasn't as com-forting as he thought it might be.
They were destined to be with Christ when they died, and should they survive, they would be with him on earth for a thousand years. But the prospect of dying was still a fearful thing. It was likely that any of the Tribulation Force who died during the next year would be martyrs to the cause of Christ, but their loved ones would still mourn them, still miss them. Worst of all, Rayford realized, he didn't want to think about how his loved ones might die.
The suffering might be short-lived, but no one wants to think of his beloved going through anything terrifying or torturous or agonizing. "Father," Rayford said, "let this be a mission of relocation at worst. I have no reason more valid than anyone else to deserve special treatment, to have my daughter supernaturally protected. You don't need her; you don't need any of us. But we have pledged ourselves to you and trust you know what you're doing."
Jock turned out to be a tall, heavy man with a uniform that may once have fit him but now encased him like a sausage. He had his underlings bring Chloe from a small cell to a slightly larger room. He pointed to a chair and she sat directly across from him at a metal table.
Jock dropped an accordion file on the table and took off his jacket, draping it over the back of the chair. He sat wearily and let out a loud sigh. "So, Phoebe Evangelista. Where'd you come up with that one?"
Chloe stared at him. She detected an Australian accent and noticed the number 18 on his forehead. On the back of his right hand was a tattoo of Nicolae Carpathia's face.
"Mind if I smoke?"
Chloe raised her eyebrows and nodded.
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