Covenant by Dean Crawford Read Free Book Online

commerce, so that none can buy or sell without the mark, which is the UPC bar-code system whose bars are encoded as three groups of six: the number of the beast—Revelation Thirteen.”
    Black shook his head. “I think that you place far too much faith in ancient texts.”
    The pastor smiled again. “Peter Three—the Apostle says that in the End Times even religious people would dismiss the idea of Christ’s return.”
    Black looked the pastor straight in the eye.
    “My allegiance is to this country and its Constitution. I cannot be seen to openly favor one faith above another.”
    Patterson kept his expression neutral.
    “Yet this country is one nation under God, Isaiah. Look around us, at what is happening to our world. America is crumbling beneath the weight of crime, corruption, and societal decline caused by atheists and secularists. America is rotting from within and God is the only one who can save us.”
    “One nation under God indeed,” Black echoed. “Yet our crumbling America is the most religious of all the world’s democracies, which kind of lets the atheists off the hook.”
    A stab of indignation punctured Patterson’s studied calm. “God is the light, not the darkness. Only a lack of faith can see His light deflected from a true path.”
    “I can’t support your church any further if you continue with these inflammatory speeches,” Black said firmly, standing.
    Patterson regarded Black for a long moment, masking his fury at the senator’s resilience. A man who had survived the political machine due to his popularity with ordinary folk, hockey moms, and liberals, Isaiah Black had always been a more pliable man in time of need. He decided to turn the screws up a notch.
    “The voters may not forgive you lightly, Isaiah.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “If you turn your back on us, then you turn your back on God and abandon any chance of redemption. I command the allegiance of thirty million faithful Americans, Isaiah. They do not vote for a president or a party, they vote for God, and if you abandon us, then I’ll make damn sure that ten percent of this country’s voters abandon you. ”
    Senator Black’s jaw dropped open. “You can’t control voters like that.”
    The pastor shook his head slowly, a smile creasing his thin lips.
    “Can you afford to take the risk? I would suggest that you ask yourself something, Isaiah. What matters more to you: misguided government policy or your place as the president of the United States of America?”
    Senator Black ground his teeth.
    “I have blood to give,” he said, and turned for the door.
    “We too are prepared to shed blood, to seal the covenant between man and God,” Patterson said after him, “no matter what the consequences.”

 
    AUGUST 25
    T he woman stared at him from across the street, her hair in disarray, her wrists bound, guns wedged into her side as she was wrestled into a battered sedan by masked men. Ethan shouted at her, but his voice was muted. He ran toward her, but his legs refused to move, dragging like lead weights beneath him. He saw her scream in desperation, and he heard a strange whining noise assault his ears as the world shuddered beneath his feet.
    Ethan’s eyes blinked open, the turbulence shuddering through the aircraft jolting him awake.
    He stared out of his window as the Boeing 737 turned steeply over the sparkling azure Mediterranean. The coast of Israel drifted past five thousand feet below beneath a scattering of cloud, and to the north he could see the metallic sprawl of Tel Aviv glinting through the early-morning haze. His eyes ached, and he realized that he had drifted into sleep, the first time since taking off some seven hours previously.
    Beside him Rachel Morgan sat in catatonic silence, as she had done for the past four hours. Ethan had spent half of his life crammed into aircraft flying from one godforsaken war zone to another, and had hated the narcissistic chatter of journalists from a dozen