Jacob's Trouble 666 is a novel by Terry, which was published a number of years ago. It tells the story of Jacob Zen, a young, lower echelon U.S. government official, who is forced to take on staggering responsibilities, when millions of people vanish, and his world begins coming apart. Terry wanted to share with you this fictionalized account of the Rapture and of the first part of the Tribulation era in serialized form. Although it is fiction, it is a story that could take on startling reality with your very next breath, because Christ's shout: "Come up hither" (Rev 4:1) could happen at any moment!

Chapter 19

Hugo Marchek's sister in the crumpled heap. Fiery trial through which passing was impossible. Clothing catching fire, burning. Saryeva Marchek's dress, taken from the chair and placed on top of her brother's desk, the material then smoothed in order to get a better look. Scorched by the flames engulfing the room. Gradations of browns permeating the light-colored print material, the burned areas outlining the form of a young woman. The image of a crucified man burned into the long, ancient linen shroud, which became harder and harder to see because it fled quickly, a white, shrinking rectangle against a black void.

Why was movement so inhibited? Why were his shoulders, arms, legs and head so terribly heavy? Herrlich Krimhler, here, now! To save the lost who were vanquished to this cold, inescapable blackness. Why the piles of empty, scorched clothing strewn along this path of saving grace — this shaft of light? Light and life again achieved!

Black eyes from the pyramid's top. Restraining him to the point of paralysis. Leaden legs. His body transformed into one of the huge, hewn blocks of stone, of which the pyramid should be constructed but was not. Rather was made of crystalline substance, unknown, filled with power emanating from somewhere within.

Darkness, and a single white cube shrinking while tumbling silently to nothingness, before returning to illuminate and make visible and audible the world.

"But if this is him, why is he here? They forgave him. Took him into the fold."

"He's Jacob Zen. Thinner and older than in those pictures of him. But it's him, all right."

Throbbing temples -- Must have Trachetrol. Each pump a burst of pain in the chest, the head. Hazy forms, checkered, crisscrossed, human forms, edged with spreading, velvet fringe that made them appear at first glance to be corpulent old men in silhouette against the squares of brightness behind and above them.

"He's almost awake," one of the two guards said. Both men left, then, through a doorway, whose door sounded of metal and great weight when it slammed behind them.

Focusing... not easy. He caught a glimpse of other human forms, like the previous ones, blurred at first, but, with effort, becoming somewhat clearer. They stood behind a barrier of checkerboard design, wearing gray, robe-like clothing. "Welcome, Jacob Zen," one of the men said.

The checkerboard. Mesh bars. A cage of some kind.

"Where am I?" Pain surged in his head when he spoke, forcing him to lie flat on his back again. "A compound near the city, Washington."

"D.C.? How did I get here?"

"Three men brought you here."

"You have been sleeping for quite some time," the other man said in an accent he could not place.

"What day is it?"

"Tuesday. The seventh of the month."

"Did they say anything when they brought me?"

"Nothing of importance," the older man said.

"Why are you in here?"

"We are of the house of Israel. That is crime enough for them."

Jacob smiled bitterly through his pain. These were extremely orthodox Jews, who would not change to placate INterface. Amazing they had survived this long, while preserving their honor; he had arrived at exactly the same place and time, having more than once soiled his.

"You were pardoned by them. We witnessed it from Jerusalem. Do you understand why you are now here, in this place?"

"Haven't you learned yet that they say and do whatever suits their purposes? Surely you know their ways by now," Jacob said with mild irritation.

"We know their ways," the younger man said. "Our brothers and sisters continue the fight against the evil now upon the world. But now, it must be waged with very different methods because of the most recent edict. Those who accept their mark can be monitored constantly."

Jacob leaned on one elbow and looked at the man. "What mark?"

"That which Herrlich Krimhler demanded three nights ago in the Temple at Jerusalem. The mark he ordered all peoples to accept in order to prove their loyalty to him."

"I didn't know. I passed out, I guess, or was drugged, or something. I don't remember anything after I tried to get to the top of the..." "What did you hope to accomplish?"

"To call them liars. To destroy Krimhler's credibility by showing the world the hypocrisy of his claims. But that's not important now. Tell me about this mark."

"Herrlich Krimhler declared himself to be God. He commanded everyone to receive the mark acknowledging their acceptance that he is the one and only Deity. Refusal means death by decapitation without benefit of trial, iflNterface wishes to execute those refusing. An even worse fate awaits those who are not executed. Those without the mark cannot interact within INterface Response Unity. Either their code is taken out of the system or their electronic funds are deleted. Their logic, to justify this punishment, is: if one does not receive the Allegiant mark, he chooses not to be a part of the system. To live without the mark, one must steal. Therefore he is not only disloyal to Krimhler, but a thief, deserving of death. The Six Ways to Peace is violated by those who break laws."

Jacob, through his headache, felt a jab of guilt, remembering his part in cutting innocents out of the world-saving system, before worshiping the resurrected messiah was required.

The younger man spoke. "At the time the mark is given, a transponder is implanted, either in the top of the right hand, or in the forehead. This assures that the person can be constantly monitored, the transponder being linked by a series of satellites circling the earth, to surveillance stations many times more sophisticated than were the Sector Coordinator monitoring posts."

Unusual men! Unlikely to know such things. Almost like they were divulging their knowledge to forge an understanding of some sort with him. "How do you know all of this?"

"The six hundred, sixty-six mark worn visibly on the forehead brings special recognition and services to those displaying it," the older man said, ignoring Jacob's question.

"Six hundred, sixty-six?"

"In honor of Herrlich Krimhler and his Six Ways to Peace. The Roman Numeral for the number six hundred, sixty-six, within the pyramid design."

Jacob lay back and tried to rub the pain from his eyes. His mind researching for the single neurological impulse that would trigger the recollection process and summon the words he had heard before, or read, or both. Something about a mark. A prophetical mark.

Of course! It replayed within his brain. Hugo Marchek's unforgettable voice quoting the Scripture. "And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and enslaved, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads. And that no man might buy or sell, except he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast; for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred three-score and six."

Without conscious prompting, his memory, or flashback delusion caused by the Trachetrol, brought remembered things to the surface. INterface doctrines his unconscious mind stored that night at Jerusalem. He heard, in his mind's-ear, Krimhler's pronouncements. His lies, about what he called the Cosmic Evolutionary Purge that occurred every eon or so. That was what accounted for the sudden elimination of the dinosaurs, and of Atlantis. It affected human-kind differently than other forms, because the human was the highest plane before reaching the metaphysical levels of soul-mindedness, at which point one became god-like. Jews remained Jews because they were not the sons of the Great Cosmic Mind, merely a by-product of its creation. Jews, as a race, turned to the side of evil. Lucifer had been on the side of what was good and right since the beginning. Jews were the offspring of Michael, while all others were the children of Lucifer. Herrlich Krimhler gave that night, Jacob somehow knew through the subsconscious remembrance, his version of the creation and all that had happened since.

Lucifer had not been chased from Heaven for leading a rebellion against God. There was no such entity as the Biblical Jehovah. The war that raged was between Lucifer and Michael, the angel created by Lucifer, the true Mind-Father of the Cosmos. Michael was the one in rebellion, having persuaded most of humanity to believe that Lucifer was responsible for the world's problems. Michael, the true Satan, introduced his false messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, into the world through the Jewish seed. He, Herrlich Krimhler, was the true Messiah, the son of Lucifer, and at the same time, he was Lucifer.

Even with the great evils the Jewish Race had perpetrated, if the Jews would accept the mark, symbolic of Herrlich Krimhler, in what Krimhler called the Luciferian Initiation, the Jews could receive forgiveness and obtain salvation. It was possible to offer this grace to the Jew because, as a religion, Judaism traditionally rejected Michael's false Christ, Jesus of Nazareth.

"Are Jews taking this mark?" Jacob said from the hard cot, while he continued to massage his temples.

"Some," the younger man said from the cell across the concrete corridor from Jacob's cell. "Most Jews in Palestine are well-versed in the prophecies and have taken shelter. The controllers are trying to learn where they have hidden, because Herrlich Krimhler is in an insane rage, wanting to find them and destroy them."

"Where could that many people go? Do you know?"

"We are here to be executed, because we will not tell them where Israel hides."

"Executed?"

"We have learned from our guards that the executions, yours and ours, are to be shown throughout INterface. They are to be by decapitation. Krimhler, himself, ordered it."

Decapitation! Krimhler, he remembered, informed the world that night from Jerusalem that the severing of the head from the body symbolized the cutting off of any hope for redemption. The sentence to Hell. Which Hell, depended on the sin-condition. For some, it was simply ceasing to be. For others, it meant being reborn, reincarnated in a life form lower than before, and with each subsequent death, being reborn to ever descending levels, de-evolving to the most basic elements of matter. Reincarnation in reverse. Backward, ever backward in time and space.

Karen rubbed the back of his neck and kissed his eyes, her soft hair brushing his face. She sat, then lay beside him and their lips met. Spring lay just outside the windows, bright morning light full of pollens rising and swirling and making the colors beyond the neatly groomed garden appear to co-mingle into a pleasant mist.

One does not dream in color, it was said or written somewhere. But this was vividly colorful, looking out the window between the time of parting and fusing again with her velvet lips. More so than reality. But this was reality. She was loving him, while the unfamiliar but unforgettable fragrances came in through the open windows, her fingers long and cool and gentle, soothing the taut muscles, forcing the aching from his skull. More real than any reality. Real. Reality like he had not known. Not a dream... Not a dream. Real!

She was his, not some glazed-eyed addict. His to love, to hold, to share his passions with, to give to and take pleasure from.

He sat up, his vision at first dark, slowly gathering in his surroundings and making his other senses aware, a dream! She was not really here; they were not in each others' arms, together in an indescribably beautiful garden-place, loving, being human again.

Still night, the light outside the small, square windows causing shadows where it hit against and curved around the metal bars, creating crisscrossed patterns on the gray floor beyond the bunk.

The pain was gone from his neck and the back of his head. The dream, a God-sent physical relief, though while consciousness became more focused, the remembered beauty of the dream caused greater pain of the soul. The two men slept in their respective cells across the small corridor, the bars in their windows making similarly checkered patterns on their bunks and floors. Somewhere in the smog-filled early morning, far distant, a large dog barked, causing others to sound. Soon all was quiet again.

What would it be like to have one's head cleaved from the body? A moment of pain? An eternity? Instant unconsciousness? Or a second of flip-flopping, through dying eyes, seeing the last of the world in a violently twirling moment before thudding against the bottom of the container?

Could the brain, did the brain, stay alive for the minute or two or however many it took for the oxygen to deplete? Most likely, there was instant unconsciousness. Most likely, but who could testify to it?

To die in such a way, helplessly, unheroically. Just on one's knees, then a plop, one's blood squirting shamefully, like that of a slaughtered animal. Better to go out gloriously — An explosion or gunned down while yourself killing the enemy. But to just kneel and die, your head tumbling into a metal box before the entertained, wicked world. Better to die proudly, like a man. An explosion, gunfire. But death was death. Cessation of breathing, of blood flow, of conscious thought. A long, meaningless sleep, where dreams have no place.

Karen ~ Lovely, soft, yet firm to the touch, Karen. She comes again and caresses and strokes and kisses. Her skin cool in the rainbow mist surrounding them both while they love.

Her touch is different, somehow, as it changes. Hard and cold and she pulls away, or is pulled away. Her face an emotionless mask while she backs away into the mist, which itself has transformed into gray, murky haze. In slow-motion, he pursues her fading form through the smog, unable to match her speed. She is not moving under her own power, but is dragged, still without expression or protest, and she disappears into the dark cloud.

The cloud dissipates and he sees her on her hands and knees, naked and white against the backdrop of absolute black, her long hair falling toward the floor, touching the floor and hiding her face from him. But it is Karen.

He tries to run to her but cannot move. He looks at his feet; they are affixed to the black marble floor by something unseen and he looks to Karen again, who seems glued on hands and knees.

From somewhere behind her, he cannot determine from where, a large, dark form emerges. A satyr-being, whose features are obscured by facial hair and hideous bumps, and whose two cloven hooves clop sharply upon the marble floor as the man-goat approaches her.

Jacob screams as Karen screams. He can move now, and will grab the thing and choke the life from it! But doors of iron bars slam between him and them, and he cannot move the crisscrossed metal, but can only grip the bars tightly and stand, helpless.

She raises her face while the thing ravages her. He shrieks obscenities but to no effect. Karen's face is turning toward him now, sweat beaded on her forehead and around her mouth.

Her eyes open, showing pain at first, but changes, while she looks into his, to an expression of sensual ecstasy. Her face is alive with passion. Not pain, not fear, but is lost in the throes of heightening pleasure. She looks at Jacob and laughs, a hideous cackle that distorts her pretty face into a face of changing features. It is first Fredria VanHorne's face, then Melisa Jantzen's. His own mother's face. Each face in its turn has "666" imprinted upon the forehead. The satyr, too, changes, to the form of a man. His face is the grinning, mocking face of Herrlich Krimhler, upon whose forehead is stamped "DCLXVI!"

"On your feet!"

Loud banging on metal brought him from the nightmare, jarring him. He stood unsteadily on the concrete floor, trying to regain full awareness, to make sense of the barking commands shouted by the man in the black uniform, who glared at him and at the other prisoners.

Time for execution! He had slept away his last minutes of life. He had been prepared for death before. Why did he inwardly now fight against resignation to the inevitable?

"Kneel before the Son," one of the controllers ordered when the steel door opened, issuing in three men, who were not recognizable because they were silhouetted blackly against the bright light just outside the cellblock. The man in the center was tall and walked with uncommon grace. His heavier, thicker companions carried Uzi-type weapons at the ready. "Kneel!" one of the controllers said angrily.

"Leave us," the tall man said in a voice unmistakably that of Herrlich Krimhler. The guards left the cellblock and Krimhler turned his eyes upon Jacob, who stood by the bunk, struck momentarily mute by the fact that he stood face to face with the man the world had seen Jacob Zen murder. Herrlich Krimhler, the master of the New Age, the resurrected Savior.

"Why do you stare, Jacob? Do you yet not believe I am who I say I am?"

The other prisoners, Jacob noticed, moved to their bars, where they listened.

"So that you might believe..." Krimhler stepped to the bars of Jacob's cell and in the same instant stood within the cell, his dark features half-obscured in the sparse light. He had passed through the metal! Walked through it! The other men, like Jacob, gawked in astonishment while Krimhler continued to speak.

"Why do you deny me? I am the Christ, the Messiah yearned for by humanity. Why do you persecute me, Jacob Zen? Why do you refuse the Lord and Savior of mankind his rightful worship? Why do you refuse the mark of adoration and salvation?"

Jacob backed away from Krimhler, who put the questions softly. He bumped against the bunk and nearly fell backward, but caught himself.

"No! You are not the Messiah. He came two-thousand years ago." He felt his voice tremble while speaking the words weakly.

"False Christs have come and gone. I am the true Christ, the Son of God. I am God."

"No! God is everything good. You are all that is evil!"

"You are deceived, Jacob. I am come because of the evils in the world. Look at the scars of crucifixion, Jacob." Krimhler stepped into the light that streamed in the window over Jacob's shoulder. A faint, circular spot of light rested upon the bronzed forehead. Krimhler held his hand out, palms up.

"See the nailprints, symbolic of the crucifixion I suffered for mankind." The shadows seemed to again engulf the face, putting Krimhler in obscuring darkness.

"But why? I didn't fire the shot. I wasn't in Jerusalem. I was on the other side of the world," Jacob said, thinking that if Krimhler was God, he would know that already. Wondering why he bothered bringing up the fact. Knowing at the same time that the subject came from his lips involuntarily. "It matters not what individual pulled the trigger. You, Jacob Zen, are made a symbol of the Jews prehistorical perpetration of absolute evil upon my creation. You were made the example of absolute evil. You were given the opportunity, on behalf of every Jew, to accept forgiveness for yourself and for them. You rejected salvation. A decision made not only for you, an individual sinner, but for all Jews of all times." "Why tell me this?" Jacob said, caustically. "God is absolute good. Could God do less than lovingly explain why it must be as it must, to the one Jew chosen to symbolize the race which is the agent of pure evil?"

"Lucifer is the pure evil." "Satan is the pure evil... The Devil," Krimhler corrected softly.

"But Lucifer is Satan... The Devil." "The supreme lie of the supremely evil being, thrust upon mankind by the false Christ and his book of delusions."

"The Bible?"

"The Christian Bible," Krimhler said. "If the God of the Christian Bible be God, then He is a flawed God indeed. How can a perfect God create a world of imperfection, where there is disease and famine and nuclear weapons and murder... all the evils mankind has experienced? Why could not God create perfection, if He is truly God? How can a loving God, as the God of the Christian Bible and of the Talmud declares himself to be, allow these evils to into a mighty resistance, thereby living on to fight with ever increasing strength born of his death. Never had the martyr-wish been a part of his psyche. Now, drawing nearer the gleaming instrument that would cleave him from the living, his understanding of what might have gone through the mind of Christ, had Christ been merely human, when contemplating Golgotha. To die passively, when the purpose was served by such death -- unlike when the millions died unresistingly during Hitler's Holocaust, with no one to know, to care, made the dying something approaching desirable.

Iron gates on the wall to his left were opened by uniformed men. People filed through the opening and walked quickly along the wall to the Decap platform where they encircled it. They turned toward Jacob and his guards, strangely silent, watching the five figures, who now stood at the steps of the platform.

Other black-uniformed controllers ordered the people to designated areas, from which they would watch the execution and at the same time add effect for the INterface broadcast. He looked at the drawn, drugged, compromised faces, each mirroring the other in sickly sameness. There could be no hatred for these pathetic onlookers, each as much a victim as himself. Even more so, because they had yielded long ago without struggle, and would go on yielding until they were inevitably chewed up and digested by INterface justice. Only pity for them, and regret, that his own physical struggle on their behalf must end. He was sure he saw in the sad, tired eyes, below the triangle-shaped symbol tattooed upon the foreheads, not desire to be entertained, or joy over seeing INterface justice done — but they were looks that tried, in their silence, to convey helpless sympathy for a fellow creature in an unalterable hell, which they realized they, like he, helped to create through their inaction during that earlier time when liberty was alive.

INterface Response Unity cameras were active, the red lights on their tops going off and on in turn when their cameramen manipulated their controlling levers and knobs and buttons in a nearby control center. The cameras' huge black lenses seemed to have life of their own while they trained on Jacob, who struggled with his natural inclination to look directly into them, afraid doing so might disrupt his fidelity to passive martyrdom.

Up the stainless steel steps and onto the chrome-like platform. The air becoming harder to breath, causing pressure in his lungs, like when scuba diving with Conrad Wilson in the Atlantic on the rare occasions the diplomat took time out from his government work.

Impossible to think of Conrad Wilson kneeling to them. To United States purposes and goals -- Yes. Maybe even to international cooperative designs. But to one-world megalomania — No. Yet his foster father had knelt, had yielded, like all the empty-eyed creatures standing around the platform beneath him. Conrad Wilson's servitude was worse! Accepting, approving, implementing their kingdom of misery. For what? A position of dominance during the scant years left to him? Was that it? Fear of death? Certainly it was not for ideals shared with Herrlich Krimhler and his kind. Or was it the drugs? Or psychological alteration in other ways? Or...

The crowd behind the rope constraints began to mumble, then quieted when one of the guards who accompanied him from the cellblock forced Jacob to kneel by pushing downward on his shoulders from behind. Another guard stood by the panel that operated the Decap Unit.

"This Jew has refused salvation through TRINITY and INterface Universal!" The voice from the loudspeakers blared at the same instant the words were broadcast to INterface Response Units throughout INterface.

"By refusing, he denies the one, true God, Herrlich Krimhler, and allies himself with the Jewish disease that continues to infect our world. He now deservedly precedes them in the fate they must all ultimately meet... ignominious extermination befitting betrayers!"

Powerful hands seized him and forced his head forward until he felt the cold steel rim of the guillotine's lower notch against his Adam's apple. The upper steel plate, with its half-circle notch descended and clanked over the back of his neck, trapping his head within the metallic circle. He stared into the bottom of the glistening steel box which would momentarily receive his head and his blood.

Tales of life's passing before one's eyes — it was not happening. Maybe once the actual process of dying began. Maybe then, while the world tumbled and whirled before his head bounced against the bottom of the container. Would there be pain when the head hit bottom? When the neck was sliced through?

Before, when death seemed near, the flashbacks began to come; why was it that all he thought of now was mashed potatoes with gravy, and a smiling, happy child playing with his puppy? A child whose mother called him to dinner, the puppy following through an opened screen door that slammed behind them when they had entered the house.

Another dream? Was he still in the cell, sleeping a sleep from which he would awaken? Or was he dead? Is this the beginning of eternity? Was Hugo Marchek right? The world wrong? Would he forever be in Hell because he had refused to accept Jesus Christ as Savior? Had he accepted Marchek's Christ without knowing it? But Marchek said it was a conscious thing. It must be done volitionally, just as refusing Christ was done willfully. Was it too late for him to accept that Jesus of two-millennia ago? If Jesus was Christ, if He was God, was He not, still? Was He not ageless, changeless? Could He not forgive as long as there was physical life surrounding the soul, which, the old eschatologist said, lives eternally or dies eternally, depending on the volitional acceptance or willful rejection of Jesus Christ?

The old black, worn Bible. The words, "Who do you say that I am?" In an inner voice not recognizable. Was it the Holy Spirit Marchek talked about? "Who do you say I am?" The question asked Peter the Apostle by Jesus of Nazareth. Peter, a fisherman who gave up his nets to follow Christ, "Who do you say I am?" The question put to him, Jacob Zen, now, in the same voice that Peter might have heard. "Who do you say that I am?" From the Bible, Peter's answer; "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God." Was it too late? Had God not run out of patience? Was it true, or a mind trick during the time of dying?

"Who do you say that I am?"

Bible verses! Why not memories of life's passing? Like in stories he had heard, of vision-like replays while final breaths were taken? Bible verses instead, clearly and swiftly going through his mind.

"Who do you say that I am?"

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have everlasting life." "It is appointed unto a man once to die, and after death, the judgment" "There is but one God and one mediator between God and men, the man, Christ Jesus."

"God is not willing that any should perish but that they should come to repentance."

"I am the Way the Truth and the Life, no man cometh to the Father but by me."

"Then shall the wicked one be revealed, the man of sin."

"It is the number of a man and the number is six hundred, threescore and six."

"And he can seth all, both rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark in their right hand or forehead and none could buy or sell except he that had the mark of the beast or the number of his name."

"And I saw the saints of God, who were beheaded for witness of Jesus, standing arrayed in white garments before the throne of God," "Whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have everlasting life." "Who do you say that I am?"

"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God," Jacob said aloud.

Violent vibrations and blasting, thumping noises interrupted his meditation. The crowd began to disperse. He strained to see what was happening around him, but his view was restricted by the limited movement allowed by the stock.

The roaring and vibration increased, the pulsating given off by the powerful engine of a large helicopter, whose massive blades kicked up dust and debris, peppering his captive head. The wind seemed to move the remaining people backward, until they cringed in a huddle against the high wall directly in front of where he knelt.

INterface dignitaries, come to witness in person the killing of a single Jew? Herrlich Krimhler, himself, come to smirk while the Decap blade pinched off his enemy's head?

Gunfire! Men and women screaming. One of the controllers blasted from the platform, landing on the ground near the frightened people. His dark uniform drenched with his own blood, a portion of his skull flapping in the wind generated by the helicopter blades. More gunfire, then just the idling motor, and decreasing wind, and feet clanking against the metal steps of the execution platform.

The upper half of the stock lifted, freeing his head. Strong arms lifted him roughly and rushed him from the platform. The men held him in their grasps and kept him from stumbling, because he could not maintain proper balance with his hands still manacled behind his back. The ski-masked men at his right side released him to turn and pour a volley of Uzi fire into a Controller, who had sprung from a doorway aiming his automatic weapon at the escaping men. An explosion to their left sent debris high into the air and caused them to nearly fall from the concussion. His left calf suddenly was on fire in one spot just below the knee joint. Hit — Again! Like on the road from Andrews. The pain worsening and spreading and causing loss of control of the leg.

His rescuers dragged him quickly toward the chopper, whose heavy blades drooped although they continued rotating — kept moving for a hasty departure from the prison yard. He felt himself being jerked into the helicopter's small doorway by someone inside, while being pushed upward from behind by the men in the ski masks, then rushed, though gently, into a net hammock. Someone began cutting his left pant leg, then ripped the material to the groin.

"Doesn't look too bad," a deep-voiced man said, mopping the calf with gauze, tossing the material to the floor, then applying pressure to the wound with a fresh gauze pad.

"It's okay, Mr. Zen. You'll be okay," the man shouted above the almost deafening slamming of the engine, while it strained then jumped the big helicopter from the ground and swept it skyward and to the left at full power. "Who are you people?" "Hello, Son."

"Uncle Conrad?" Jacob said, trying to rise from the netting, but failing. The face, smiling and at the same time frowning with concern, dissolved to blackness.