Slater pointed his remote and pressed the button. Nothing. He shook it and pressed again. This time there was a loud clunk from above their heads, and the car began to glide smoothly away from the house, out into space.

Halfway across the abyss, it suddenly stopped without warning.

‘What the…’ Slater tried the remote again.

No response. ‘Battery must be dead,’ he muttered. But the green LED was working fine. His heart picked up a step.

‘If that gizmo isn’t working,’ Callaghan said with a note of panic in his voice, ‘then how are we going to get back?’

That was when the phone rang in Slater’s pocket.

From where Ben was wedged in the crook of a rock three hundred yards away, the cable car was a tiny cube dangling against the sky. He put away the remote that Richmond had given him after switching it with the dummy one that Slater was trying to use.

Slater answered the phone. ‘Senator, is that you?’ His voice was edgy and tense, tinged with worry. ‘Wrong again, Slater,’ Ben said into the Bluetooth headset he was wearing.

Silence on the line. ‘Who is this?’

‘Look to your left,’ Ben said. ‘If your eyes are very keen, you’ll see me. I’m the speck on the mountain.’

‘Hope?’

‘You’re probably wondering how this happened,’ Ben said. ‘Tell the truth, I can’t be bothered explaining it to you. It’s a need-to-know thing. And dead men don’t need to know.’

‘Don’t do this,’ Slater stammered. ‘I have a lot of money. I’ll make you rich.’

‘It wasn’t a bad plan,’ Ben said. ‘You’re a clever guy. Callaghan too. And that was a smart move of his, erasing you from the CIA database.’ As he talked, he was undoing the straps on the padded rifle case next to him. He slid the weapon out. It was the Remington rifle that Bud Richmond’s father had given him for his twenty-first birthday. It had never been fired. He unzipped the ammunition compartment and took out five of the long, conical.308 cartridges. He pressed them one at a time into the magazine, then worked the bolt. He settled in behind the rifle. Through the scope he could clearly make out the system of pulleys and wires on the cable car roof.

Slater must have heard the metallic noises over the phone. ‘I work for a US senator,’ he protested in a panic. ‘You can’t kill me.’

‘I’ve got a message for you from the jackass,’ Ben said.

‘What? What the -’

‘You’re fired.’

He snapped off the safety and took aim, ignoring the cries of panic from his headset.

He never even felt the trigger give. The butt of the weapon kicked against his shoulder.

Three hundred yards away, the cable parted. The ends thrashed wildly. Pulleys spun. The cable car lurched and fell ten feet, then was jerked to a stop by what was left of the wire.

Inside, Slater and Callaghan were screaming, hammering like lunatics at the windows, scrabbling desperately on the tilted floor.

Ben calmly worked the bolt, found his mark and fired again. The echo of the gunshot rolled and whooshed around the mountain valley.

The cable car seemed to hang in mid-air for an instant as the cable gave. Then it dropped like a stone. It fell nearly a thousand feet before it hit the first crag. It burst apart. Wreckage tumbled down the mountainside. Somewhere among the hurtling, bouncing debris were the tiny matchstick figures of Slater and Callaghan as they fell screaming down to the rocks a few hundred feet further down.

By the time their bodies had hit the bottom, Ben was already packing up the rifle. He slung the case over his shoulder and started making his way down the mountainside.

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Alex was waiting down below in the car. Ben climbed into the passenger seat. She started up the car and headed along the dusty, empty road. They sat in silence for a while.

‘I would have liked to know you,’ she said quietly.

‘It could have been different,’ he replied.

‘But it isn’t, is it?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not.’

‘Won’t you change your mind? Stay with me for a while. See how things go.’

He said nothing.

‘I know how you feel,’ she said. ‘But doesn’t life have to go on?’

‘I’m not ready, Alex. I’m sorry. That’s just how it is.’

Time passed. Miles under their wheels before they spoke again.

‘What will you do now?’ she said.

‘Go home.’

‘Back to theology?’

He said nothing for a moment. Then he whirred the window down. The wind blew their hair. He reached into his bag and took out the Bible. Stared at it for a few seconds. The book couldn’t mean the things it once had to him. Not now.

He tossed it out of the open window.

It hit the seventy-mile-an-hour blast and burst open, pages fluttering. Then it tumbled down the grassy embankment at the side of the road and was far behind them.

‘I guess not, then,’ she said.

‘What about you?’

She glanced over at him. ‘Do next? Same as you, Ben. Take stock of things. Look for a new direction. Maybe the Agency isn’t for me after all. I signed up because I wanted to help people. I figure there are better ways for me to do that. So, I’ve been thinking I should go back to medical school.’

He nodded. ‘That’s a good decision. You’ll make a brilliant doctor.’

She reached across and squeezed his hand. ‘I’m going to miss you, Ben Hope,’ she said.

‘I’ll miss you too.’

‘Will you be OK?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ he said.

‘Really?’

He smiled. ‘Really.’

‘Keep in touch.’

He didn’t reply.

‘I know you won’t,’ she sighed.

After a few more miles, a sign flashed up for a small town. He showed her a place where she could drop him off, and she pulled up on the grassy verge.

She said nothing as he climbed out of the car. He slung his jacket over his shoulder and watched as she drove away.

The car grew smaller and smaller until it was just a dust cloud in the distance.

The sun was setting. He turned and started walking towards the town.

Author’s Note

Although The Doomsday Prophecy is a work of fiction, it is a fact that many millions of people across the world, the majority of them evangelical American Christians, fervently believe that we may at any moment be plunged into the apocalyptic End Time events that they claim to be forecast in the Bible. None of the biblical references in this book have been invented; it’s all there in the Good Book for those who wish to study it. As far as these millions of people are concerned, the prophesied horror scenario is for real, it’s coming, it’s unstoppable and those of us who aren’t ready for it are doomed to a hideous fate.

Bible study being such an enormous and complex subject, in the writing of The Doomsday Prophecy some liberties have inevitably been taken in the interests of drama, and to some extent it was necessary to simplify. Real-life End Time prophecy believers tend to borrow here and there from various parts of the Bible, piecing it all together across the board, rather than simply lifting ready-made ideas from one single source as the characters appear to do in the novel. This is the reason why, in real life, End Time prophecies can differ slightly in their interpretation: some believe that the Rapture will take place before the Tribulation (known as pre-Tribulation belief), and others believe it will take place some time after the Tribulation has already started, meaning that all of us, faithful and unbelievers alike, would have to endure quite a long period of unspeakable nastiness together before the more fortunate are whisked away to Salvation. It is this ‘mid-Tribulationist’ stance that I have attributed to Clayton Cleaver and the End Time conspirators in this story.