02 Thunder of Heaven: A Joshua Jordan Novel by Tim Lahaye Page A
Authors: Tim Lahaye
Tags: Christian
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couple of fights.”
“You know about that?”
“I make it a habit of knowing about the men under me. The main thing I recall from your file, Ethan, is that you had difficulty taking orders when you disagreed with them.”
Ethan’s bravado disappeared. He looked down for an instant but then looked up, straight into Joshua’s eyes and said, “With all due respect, sir, I admit my faults … all of them. But I also recall a story about a decorated flying ace, doing surveillance over Iran’s nuclear facilities. When the Iranian radar painted him, and enemy ground-to-air missiles were about to be launched right up his tail, command signaled him to abort. The flier refused and kept his heading. He got the spy shots from the camera in that U-2X ultrasonic jet and returned to base without a scratch. Mission complete. That was one gutsy move that you did, sir, if I may say so. And that flight of yours over Iran is a legend among my flying buddies.”
Joshua was suddenly taken aback by Ethan’s account. But he also remembered what he learned at his briefing later at the Pentagon about that flight. Something he hadn’t told anyone since. There was a reason he hadn’t been blown right out of the sky. Somebody else had his back. In fact, a guy on the ground had sacrificed his life to insure that didn’t happen.
He looked at Ethan. Young. Talented. Overly eager. Way too cocky. But Joshua saw the potential — and the need for Ethan March to have somebody watch his back.
“Send me that résumé,” Joshua said. “But no promises.” Then he shook Ethan’s hand.
Cal was cutting through the big living room, with its mammoth fieldstone fireplace and bear rug on the wall. He glanced over just as Ethan was thanking Joshua for something and the two were shaking hands.Cal stopped, struck by what he saw. His face tightened. When his father caught him out of the corner of his eye, Cal continued walking, through the room, out the front door, and down the front-porch steps without stopping.
TWENTY-ONE
Joshua had a plan. He’d come up with it earlier on the porch but kept it secret from everyone except Abby. His idea was to use the White House ceremony as an opportunity to slip the intelligence he’d received about an impending attack against the U.S. directly to the president. Joshua trusted Pack McHenry’s intel sources, but just being at an event with the commander in chief wasn’t enough. The real obstacles were the political realities he knew all too well. He had met with presidents before. Merely being honored with a Presidential Medal of Freedom wouldn’t guarantee him private, confidential access to the most powerful man in the world. That much he knew.
And there was another matter to consider, his founding of the Roundtable itself. He had recently asked Abby to give him legal advice about any legal liability the group might have for its activities and how close they were to the edge of danger. When he did, she just gave him one of those knowing looks. She’d already done her homework even before he’d asked — typical of Abby. But when she told her husband what she’d come up with, she adopted her serious lawyer posture.
She cited the federal laws against “seditious conspiracy”: 18 United States Code Section 2384. Abby said that in the hands of a skillful, mean-spirited prosecutor, the meaning of the word “force” in that criminal law could actually be stretched to cover some of their plans to help protect the United States from foreign threats. Every member of the Roundtable, especially Joshua, could be made to look like a wealthy criminal vigilante interfering with U.S. policy — in effect, running their own shadow government. It was a real risk. It didn’tmatter that they loved their country or believed the nation’s leaders were failing its citizens and imperiling its safety from enemies foreign and domestic. The point remained, in the end, that their clandestine activities could land them all in
“You know about that?”
“I make it a habit of knowing about the men under me. The main thing I recall from your file, Ethan, is that you had difficulty taking orders when you disagreed with them.”
Ethan’s bravado disappeared. He looked down for an instant but then looked up, straight into Joshua’s eyes and said, “With all due respect, sir, I admit my faults … all of them. But I also recall a story about a decorated flying ace, doing surveillance over Iran’s nuclear facilities. When the Iranian radar painted him, and enemy ground-to-air missiles were about to be launched right up his tail, command signaled him to abort. The flier refused and kept his heading. He got the spy shots from the camera in that U-2X ultrasonic jet and returned to base without a scratch. Mission complete. That was one gutsy move that you did, sir, if I may say so. And that flight of yours over Iran is a legend among my flying buddies.”
Joshua was suddenly taken aback by Ethan’s account. But he also remembered what he learned at his briefing later at the Pentagon about that flight. Something he hadn’t told anyone since. There was a reason he hadn’t been blown right out of the sky. Somebody else had his back. In fact, a guy on the ground had sacrificed his life to insure that didn’t happen.
He looked at Ethan. Young. Talented. Overly eager. Way too cocky. But Joshua saw the potential — and the need for Ethan March to have somebody watch his back.
“Send me that résumé,” Joshua said. “But no promises.” Then he shook Ethan’s hand.
Cal was cutting through the big living room, with its mammoth fieldstone fireplace and bear rug on the wall. He glanced over just as Ethan was thanking Joshua for something and the two were shaking hands.Cal stopped, struck by what he saw. His face tightened. When his father caught him out of the corner of his eye, Cal continued walking, through the room, out the front door, and down the front-porch steps without stopping.
TWENTY-ONE
Joshua had a plan. He’d come up with it earlier on the porch but kept it secret from everyone except Abby. His idea was to use the White House ceremony as an opportunity to slip the intelligence he’d received about an impending attack against the U.S. directly to the president. Joshua trusted Pack McHenry’s intel sources, but just being at an event with the commander in chief wasn’t enough. The real obstacles were the political realities he knew all too well. He had met with presidents before. Merely being honored with a Presidential Medal of Freedom wouldn’t guarantee him private, confidential access to the most powerful man in the world. That much he knew.
And there was another matter to consider, his founding of the Roundtable itself. He had recently asked Abby to give him legal advice about any legal liability the group might have for its activities and how close they were to the edge of danger. When he did, she just gave him one of those knowing looks. She’d already done her homework even before he’d asked — typical of Abby. But when she told her husband what she’d come up with, she adopted her serious lawyer posture.
She cited the federal laws against “seditious conspiracy”: 18 United States Code Section 2384. Abby said that in the hands of a skillful, mean-spirited prosecutor, the meaning of the word “force” in that criminal law could actually be stretched to cover some of their plans to help protect the United States from foreign threats. Every member of the Roundtable, especially Joshua, could be made to look like a wealthy criminal vigilante interfering with U.S. policy — in effect, running their own shadow government. It was a real risk. It didn’tmatter that they loved their country or believed the nation’s leaders were failing its citizens and imperiling its safety from enemies foreign and domestic. The point remained, in the end, that their clandestine activities could land them all in
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