Day’s End

Brian Kenneth Swain

Description

Day’s End is a fast-paced thriller about an international conspiracy to render unusable for centuries to come one of the world’s holiest and most contentious sites.
Though the day is cool and windy, Khalid is sweating profusely by the time he rounds the south corner of the market’s main avenue. The entire marketplace is more than ten blocks long, and the choice of precise location is entirely his. Do not attract attention, they had said. Ride at the same speed as everyone else. Best if you do not stop before pushing the button. Just keep riding.
“Mrs. Levin,” Ariella calls into the rear of the shop. “I think I’ll take you up on that delivery. There’s a man coming just n—”
The first sprinkles of late morning rain have begun to fall on the marketplace. At that moment, the center of the avenue, the vegetable stand, nine other shops, the old woman, the young girl, and more than a dozen others much like them all disappear in one apocalyptic flash of brilliant white light. And with them, a young man who has closed his eyes at the last moment, just as his trembling thumb pushes firmly down on the button.

Sujets

• Vehículo aéreo no tripulado
• Dome of the Rock
• Temple Mount
• Unmanned aerial vehicle
• Terrorism
• Jerusalem
• Judaism
• Caesium
• Christianity
• Islam
• Drone
• Fiction
• Césium

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 30 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781663246752
• Langue: English

Extrait

Also by
Brian Kenneth Swain

Novels and Stories
World Hunger
Alone in the Light
Sistina
The Book of Names

Poetry
Secret Places and Other Poems
My America
Chicken Feet

Nonfiction
The Curious Habits of Man

Children’s
Hegel and Hobbes Have an Adventure






DAY’S END






Brian Kenneth Swain








DAY’S END


Copyright © 2022 Brian Kenneth Swain.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.





iUniverse
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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6632-4676-9 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4677-6 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4675-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022919102



iUniverse rev. date: 11/19/2022



CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Chronology Of Historical Events
Introduction

Chapter 1 The Aviator
Chapter 2 The Conspirators
Chapter 3 The Fathers
Chapter 4 The Preacher
Chapter 5 The Thief
Chapter 6 The Sister
Chapter 7 The Family
Chapter 8 The Association
Chapter 9 The Aviator
Chapter 10 The Preacher’s Wife
Chapter 11 The Courier
Chapter 12 The Preacher’s Son
Chapter 13 The Imam
Chapter 14 Mother and Son
Chapter 15 The Detective
Chapter 16 The Aviator
Chapter 17 The Technician
Chapter 18 The Courier
Chapter 19 The Fathers
Chapter 20 The Doctor
Chapter 21 Grandfather and Granddaughter
Chapter 22 The Reaper
Chapter 23 The Aviator
Chapter 24 The Granddaughter
Chapter 25 The Technician
Chapter 26 The Aviator
Chapter 27 The Courier
Chapter 28 The Essay
Chapter 29 The Families
Chapter 30 The Imam
Chapter 31 The Pickup
Chapter 32 The Technician
Chapter 33 The Minister
Chapter 34 The Flight
Chapter 35 The Aviator
Chapter 36 The Pilot
Chapter 37 The Fathers
Chapter 38 The Parents
Chapter 39 Reflection and Consequence

Epilogue



For Lanie, who came into my life at just the right moment
and made it wonderful.



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Great thanks are due to several individuals who played a role in bringing this story to life. First on that list are my early readers: Nicholas DeVito and Daniel Cotlar. Your insights are, as always, enormously appreciated. Critical, as well, to my research were Mark Ware, Civil Air Patrol colleague and USAF F-16 pilot, and Mark May and Bekah Clark of the 558 th Flight Training Squadron at Randolph AFB in San Antonio, for sharing their experiences with the MQ-9 Reaper and other military UAVs. Finally, Susan Ciancio is, as always, a wonderful editor who makes every piece of writing better than it was.



Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
Blaise Pascal



CHRONOLOGY OF HISTORICAL EVENTS
957 BCE – Solomon constructs the First Temple at the top of Mount Moriah.
587 BCE – Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar invades Jerusalem and destroys the First Temple.
515 BCE – The Second Temple is built, completed during the reign of King Darius of Persia.
19 BCE – King Herod undertakes complete renovation of the Second Temple.
70 CE – Titus and the Romans invade Jerusalem and destroy the Second Temple.
691 - 692 CE – The Dome of the Rock is completed by Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan.
May 14, 1948 – The nation of Israel is founded and promptly invaded by Arab armies, damaging the Dome of the Rock.
June 7, 1967 – The Temple Mount is liberated by the Israeli army. The Israeli flag briefly flies above the Dome, but Defense Minister Moshe Dayan orders it removed.
June 17, 1967 – Dayan meets with Waqf officials and returns control of the Temple Mount to Muslim authorities.
August 21, 1969 – Australian Denis Rohan starts a fire in the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
April 11, 1982 – American Alan Goodman opens fire on the Temple Mount, killing one Muslim and wounding four others.
September 28, 2000 – Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon visits the Temple Mount, setting off rioting and initiating the second intifada.



INTRODUCTION
If you doubt that the Jewish people would ever attempt something so audacious (as replacing the Dome with the Temple), you need to know that some Jewish people are already planning for it.
John Hagee
As an avowed agnostic, my interest in religion is a dispassionate and strictly intellectual one. In particular, I am fascinated by the impact that religion has on the daily lives of the billions who profess to practice one. What I find most disturbing, though, is the capacity for the religious to resort to derision and violence toward their fellow man in order to protect and perpetuate their faith above all others. I have asserted in the past that faith is the only thing that unites the religions of the world. In retrospect, that isn’t quite accurate. One other important characteristic shared by most of the world’s religions is a fervent belief that a specific group (yours) is the only one to have gotten it right and that all other religions (including, of course, the nonreligious) are nothing more than heretics to be a) ignored, b) converted, c) persecuted, or in extreme cases d) killed.
Indeed, many millions throughout history have been killed, tortured, persecuted, and disowned of their possessions (sometimes all four) in the name of religion, either because of the one they practice or because they choose to profess none. A very significant portion of this mayhem has taken place in and around the Middle East and has occurred because of the generally fraught interactions of Christians, Jews, and Muslims. And if there is a “ground zero” for this conflict, it must surely be the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which at thirty-five acres is easily the most conflict-ridden piece of real estate in the world. It is a place of special religious significance to all three groups, with each adhering to a belief system that incorporates the Mount in some integral way.
A fundamental tenet of Judaism is that the end of time—from which this book’s title comes—cannot take place without there first occurring an elaborate series of events in and around the Mount, not least of which is the destruction of current structures and the erection of a Third Temple. 1 There exist organizations whose sole purpose is the consummation of these events, the notion being that if mankind undertakes the right actions, these actions can directly bring about—or at least accelerate—the end times fervently desired by so many. Some of these organizations limit their work to benign activities like fundraising or the construction of elaborate temple models. Others have taken things a bit further and actually designed and created the garments they believe are required for the ceremonies prophesied to follow construction of the temple. And still others have undertaken the breeding of flawless red heifers that are an integral part of the purification ceremony that must take place in order to sanctify the Third Temple. Finally, there exist the less-publicized groups whose activities center around actively attempting to cause the destruction of the existing structures on the Temple Mount. Indeed, such destruction has come extremely close on numerous occasions through history, not only due to various bombing attempts, but even by the much-lauded Moshe Dayan himself who, immediately following the 1967 war, moved bulldozers to the Mount in anticipation of razing the Dome. He subsequently changed his mind about this, and was, for much of his remaining life, vilified for missing what many regarded as the Jews’ best opportunity ever.
Day’s End is the story of three families living very different lives in different parts of the world and ultimately thrust together in ways that none fully understands and with consequences none can escape. When the forces described above converge, the families also converge—at a tragic crossroads. Though this story is fiction, it is based on an entirely plausible sequence of motivations and actions. As events in the Levant advance in their turbid journey, it will likely continue to be the Temple Mount that infuses the greatest passions and results in the greatest tragedies.
Brian Kenneth Swain
San Antonio, Texas


1 The first having been King Solomon’s Temple (957 – 587 BCE), and the second completed