Read Armageddon: The Cosmic Battle Of The Ages for Free Online Page B

God.”

CHAPTER THREE
    THE PROBLEM with the camouflaged service door open just a sliver was that it did not give Chloe the view she needed. While the door faced east, where the suspicious vehicle had stood idling just a block away last time she looked, the opening in the door gave her only a north-east view. The door would have to swing open to at least forty-five degrees to confirm that the car or truck or whatever it was was still there. Dare she risk the door catching a glint from a street lamp or making a sound or triggering[+ +]some portable motion detector the GC might have brought along?
    Chloe allowed herself to wish that the vehicle brought good news rather than bad. Maybe it bore a band of other underground believers who had heard about the Trib Force contingent that had burrowed itself beneath a former military base. Wouldn’t that be heaven, to discover more brothers and sisters who could come alongside to help, encourage, and defend? It was Chloe who had stumbled upon The Place in Chicago with its exciting band of self-taught believers. On the other hand, all that activity, their moving in with the Trib Force, was the first step in compromising the safe house. That many warm bodies moving about in an area the GC had believed was quarantined tipped them off and brought them sniffing. If Chloe was to take credit for the new friends, she had to accept the heat for the end of a great safe house.
    She couldn’t let that happen again. There were too many here, and though the place was under the earth, it had all the advantages the Strong Building had. For one thing, it had George Sebastian, who had expanded on what Chloe-and anyone else who was interested-had learned about combat training from Mac McCullum on their mission to Greece. The rickety exercise equipment George and Priscilla had salvaged from the military base was anything but state-of-the-art, but George thought that was an advantage.
    “The newfangled machines do all the work for ya, anyway,” he said. He had refurbished and lubricated what was available, and within six weeks several Trib Forcers had spent enough time in a makeshift workout room to start toning neglected muscles. That was just a prerequisite, of course. What Chloe enjoyed most was George’s training. A lot of it was just common sense, but a lot of it wasn’t. He had been trained at the highest levels and proved to be an excellent teacher. Chloe felt she could handle herself and a weapon in almost any situation.
    That training was what niggled at the back of her brain now and told her she was making a fundamental mistake. Not only was she away from her post, but no one would have a clue where she was. She had no way of communicating from a remote location. So if she was going to open the service door wide enough to see a potential enemy a block away or-for all she knew-standing directly in front of her, she had to make a deci-sion. Was she opening the door quickly to step outside and shut it again, or was she going to keep a hand on the doorknob in case she needed to retreat fast?
    She pressed her ear against the door to see if she could detect movement nearby, but her Uzi clattered against it, and her ear was covered by her sweatshirt hood and ski mask anyway. She pulled back, feeling like an idiot.
Deep breath. Calm down. Let’s just step outside in one smooth motion and shut the door behind us.
Referring to herself in the collective
we
made her feel less alone, but she knew she was kidding herself.
    Careful to take full, quiet strides, rolling heel to toe, Chloe pushed the door open, moved out, and shut it behind her. Was the vehicle still there? She’d have to wait a beat. If it was, its taillights were off. Chloe moved to a row of tall bushes that hid her from the east, then spun silently to be sure no enemy had flanked her from another direction. She paused for a moment to drink in the freedom of simply being out in the crisp wee-hour air.
    As her eyes adjusted to the dim light