"Tim LaHaye & Jerry Jenkins - Left Behind Series 7 - The Indwelling" - читать интересную книгу автора (LaHaye Tim)

perpetrators had no idea he would stumble upon it. Buck knelt before the chairs,
repulsed by the sound of the drips. He knew if either of the women had survived,
their respiration would have been noisy with their heads in that position. Still, he
had to make sure. He lodged the flashlight between his knees, angled it toward the
women, and turned it on. As he reached to check for Hannelore's pulse, the
flashlight slipped and illumined her ankles, tied securely to the front legs of the
chair. As he angled the light up again and tightened his knees to support it, he
noticed her wrists tied behind her. A smallish woman, Hannelore's torso was
stretched to allow her hands to go around the back of the chair. Great gushes of air
rushed past Buck's gritted teeth.
He grabbed the flashlight and moved behind the chair to feel her wrist, but that put
his arm in line with the blood dripping from her head. And though her wrist was
warm, as he feared, there was no pulse.
Hannelore's mother, less than a foot away, was bound in the same position. A squat,
heavy woman, her arms had been yanked into contorted positions to allow her
wrists to be tied. She too was dead.
Who could have done this? And wouldn't Stefan, his Middle East maleness coming
to the fore, have fought to the death to prevent it? Where could he be? Buck wanted
to pan the light back and forth along the floor toward the front, but that might have
been suicidal, he would be so obvious from the street. It was all he could do to keep
from calling Stefan's name.
Chaim had not been home when Buck had talked with Hannelore on the phone. Did
this massacre mean Chaim had arrived, or that he hadn't? Had Chaim himself been
forced to witness this? Buck's first task was to locate Stefan, his second to check the
entirety of the huge house for Chaim. If Chaim had not returned and this was all
meant as a warning for him, could the place be staked out, surrounded? Perhaps it
was.
Buck feared he would find not just Stefan's body, but also Chaim's. But how would
Chaim have gotten there? Who might have caught him, rescued him, or helped him
off that platform? And what was the purpose of murder41 ing these innocents? Had
they been tortured for information and eliminated once they provided it, or because
they had not? Or was this simply vengeance? Chaim had been vitriolic in his
revulsion of GC Peacekeepers, of the breaking of the covenant between the GC and
Israel.
Though he had never been a religious Jew, he expressed horror over the intrusion of
the world government into the very affairs of the temple. First the Jews had been
allowed to rebuild; then they were not allowed to conduct themselves the way they
wished in the new temple.
But do you extinguish the household of a statesman, a national treasure, for such an
offense? And what of the man himself? Buck's head throbbed, his chest felt tight,
and he was short of breath. He was desperate to be with Chloe and Kenny and felt
as if he could hold them tight for three and a half years. He knew the odds. Each had
only a one in four chance of surviving until the Glorious Appearing. But even if he,
or they, had to go to heaven before that, he didn't want it to be this way. No one
deserved this. No one but Carpathia.
It had been a long time since David had suffered such carping. On the way to his
office from the palace hangar, past a full-dress color guard of pallbearers and a
heavily armed ring of security personnel, his beeper had signaled a top-level
emergency message. The call could have originated only locally, of course, but this
sort of a code was reserved for life-and-death situations. He did not recog42 nisei