Free Nicolae: The Rise Of The Antichrist by Tim Lahaye, Jerry B. Jenkins Page B

to a halt. One report said it had been that way since the moment of the first blast. Buck wished he had time to scan the exits that led to the beach. There were plenty of places where a Range Rover might have left the road, crashed, or been hidden. If it became clear to Chloe that she could not have made any decent time by heading to the Kennedy or the Eisenhower from The Drake, she might have tried the LSD . But as Buck got to the Michigan Avenue exit that would have taken him within sight of The Drake, he would have had to kill someone or go airborne to go any farther. The barricade that shut down Lake Shore Drive and the exit looked like something from the set of Les Miserables.
    Squad cars, ambulances, fire trucks, construction and traffic horses, caution lights, you name it, were stretched across the entire area, manned by a busy force of emergency workers. Buck came to a screeching halt, swerving and sliding about fifty feet before his right front tire blew. The car spun as emergency workers danced out of the way.
    Several swore at him, and a woman police officer advanced, gun drawn. Buck started to get out, but she said, “Stay right where you are, pal!” Buck lowered the window with one hand and reached for his press credentials with the other. The policewoman would have none of that. She thrust her weapon through the window and pressed it to his temple. “Both hands where I can see ‘em, scumbag!” She opened the door, and Buck executed the difficult procedure of getting out of a small car without the use of his hands.
    She made him lie flat on the pavement, spread-eagle.
    Two other officers joined the first and roughly frisked Buck.
    “Any guns, knives, needles?”
    Buck went on the offensive. “Nope, just two sets of IDs.”
    The cops pulled a wallet out of each of his back pockets, one containing his own papers, the other the documents of the fictitious Herb Katz.
    “So, which one are you, and what’s the deal?”
    “I’m Cameron Williams, publisher of Global Community Weekly. I report directly to the potentate. The phony ID is to help me get into unsympathetic countries.”
    A young, slender cop pulled Buck’s real ID wallet from the hands of the woman officer. “Let me just have a look at this,” he said with sarcasm. “If you really report to Nicolae Carpathia, you’d have level 2-A clearance, and I don’t see—oops, I guess I do see level 2-A security clearance here.”
    The three officers huddled to peer at the unusual identification card. “You know, carrying phony 2-A security clearance is punishable by death-”
    “Yes, I do.”
    “We aren’t even going to be able to run your license plate, with the computers so jammed.”
    “I can tell you right now,” Buck said, “that I borrowed this car from a friend named Zee. You can check that for sure before you have it junked.”
    “You can’t leave this car here!”
    “What am I gonna do with it?” Buck said. “It’s worthless, it’s got a flat tire, and there’s no way we’re gonna find help for that tonight.”
    “Or for the next two weeks, most likely,” one of the cops said. “So, where were you goin’ in such an all-fired hurry?”
    “The Drake.”
    “Where have you been, pal? Don’t you listen to the news? Most of Michigan Avenue is toast.”
    “Including The Drake?”
    “I don’t know about that, but it can’t be in too good a shape by now.”
    “If I walk up over that rise and get onto Michigan Avenue on foot, am I gonna die of radiation poisoning?”
    “Civil Defense guys tell us there’s no fallout readings. That means this must have been done by the militia, trying to spare as much human life as possible. Anyway, if those bombs had been nuclear, the radiation would have traveled a lot farther than this already.”
    “True enough,” Buck said. “Am I free to go?”
    “No guarantees you’ll get past the guards on Michigan Avenue.”
    “I’ll take my chances.”
    “Your best bet is with that clearance