by Alana Terry
“What shall I sing?” she asked with wavering voice.
“Sing the Hallelujah song, the one about the morning,” Zeke suggested.
“Lord God, we ask you to give Tameka strength to sing,” Matthew prayed.
As Tameka lifted up her voice, weakly at first, then increasing in strength, the others joined with her.
“Hallelujah, morning is coming... Hallelujah, we will yet see the dawn... Hallelujah, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings... Jesus, Jesus, You are the Morning Star, Hallelujah... Jesus, Jesus, You are coming again, Hallelujah!”
As she sang, Hadassah remembered she had her utility knife, the one for cutting herself from the parachute if she needed to, nestled between her sleeve and the side of her forearm. It was the arm the dog clamped his jaws around, and its pulsation made her feel nauseous. She continued to sing praises as she edged the knife toward her palm with the chair post. Her arm throbbed, but she worked at it none the less.
By the third chorus of the song, she had the blade out and began to slice through the ropes holding her. Once she freed her hands, she groped around the room to find the others.
“You’re free?” Zeke asked her.
“Shh,” she whispered in return, and then turned to Tameka, José, Lucia and Carlos.
“You’re like the angel in the book of Acts,” José said.
“I suspect there are many angels here tonight,” Zeke said.
“How are you feeling?” Hadassah asked Matthew as she crouched close to his chair and began to cut the ropes binding him.
“Less dizzy. Ready to roll out of this joint.”
“What happened to Paul?” she asked as she hid her knife again.
But she didn’t get an answer. The door burst open and three of the guards strode in, accompanied by a bald man well dressed in pajamas. She knew immediately that this was the drug lord.
“Well, well, is this who woke me? A bunch of children. And all unbound. That one. He’s much too old.” The drug lord pointed to Zeke, and the guard he addressed shot Zeke at point blank range.
The children began screaming before Zeke’s body hit the floor.
“Oh, be quiet. And don’t try to escape, please, I don’t like my men to waste bullets, and I’m not keen about blood on my new carpet upstairs. But we’ll shoot you if we need to.” The drug lord turned to one of the guards. “Lock the door again after us.”
When the drug lord left the room with his guards, they were in the dark once more.
Tameka and Hadassah held one another in total shock while the children cried and Matthew prayed in the Spirit louder and louder.
“Jesus, you came so we may have life and have it more abundantly,” José said over and over amid tears. Hadassah and Tameka joined in, though they hardly felt the faith for it. After ten minutes, everyone stopped and fell silent, for they heard a peculiar groan and rustle in the dark.
“He showed me the way to lead you out.” There was no mistaking it—this was Zeke’s voice.
“We saw you,” Tameka said with a shiver. “You died. They shot you and... and you died.”
“They nailed the Lord of glory to a cross,” Zeke said, “but He rose to life again after three days. Surely He can raise this jar of clay. Carlos?”
“Yes,” the boy said meekly.
“Carlos, go try the door.”
“But they locked it, sir.”
“Go ahead,” Matthew urged.
The boy tried the handle. “It’s locked.”
“Try again,” Zeke said.
“Okay,” Carlos answered. He twisted once more and the door opened readily for him. “Sir, are we in heaven?” he asked.
“Heaven has come here, my friend,” Zeke answered. He spoke with such assurance it filled Hadassah with sudden courage.
“What should we do?” she asked Zeke.
“Go right through that door, on up those stairs, and lead these children out of here.”
“What about the guards?” Tameka asked.
“I’ll go chat ’em up a bit first, tell them about heaven and why they need Jesus. At least it should distract them, and then I’ll see you in heaven. The Lord told me I’d be back in a minute, and quite frankly, I can’t wait to see Him again.” In the dim light coming through the open door, Hadassah could see a smile beaming on Zeke’s face. He had about him, like clothing for a wedding feast, the peace she longed for.
All the way up the stairs and out of the house, Hadassah thought of the words Jesus said, “Greater love has no man than this—that he lay down his life for his friends.” And when she was back in the jungle again and heard the second gunshot, her tears had joy mixed with the sorrow.
Chapter 31: Navigating the Way
“PAUL WAS OKAY,” MATTHEW said to her as the two of them brought up the rear of the group while Tameka led the way. “He was shot in the back of the leg, his right leg not his left. I gave him into Dave’s care before I turned back to find you.”
“Thanks for coming back for me.”
“We did it, Hadassah. We lost a man and suffered a few injuries, but Zeke’s with Jesus and the hostages are free.”
“Thanks for coming back for me.”
The rain had stopped, but the lightning in the distance strobe-lit a passage through the jungle. Both Matthew and Hadassah checked their watches obsessively during the 3 o’clock hour. They didn’t want to miss the window of time when they could contact Mr. Cooper before the team was picked up by people from Pastor Jorgé’s church.
“Oh, my goodness, you guys are alive,” Mr. Cooper exclaimed over the comlink. “How many of you have been hurt?”
“We’re alright and we have children with us. But we lost Zeke.”
The cheers at the other end of the comlink died.
“What do you mean you lost Zeke?” Mr. Cooper asked coolly.
“He’s gone to be with Jesus, sir,” Matthew said.
“Listen, get here as quickly as you can, but the van will be gone. We’ll be leaving some supplies, and Dave, Maleek, Pedro and Hyun will wait for you. Pastor Jorgé said he would wait for the children, too. But we need to get Paul and Pastor Jorgé’s wife to the hospital as quickly as we can: they’ve both been shot. Follow the coordinates exactly, because the forest gets pretty thick before the clearing.”
Matthew turned to Hadassah and Tameka as soon as he finished speaking with Mr. Cooper. “We’re going to have to carry these kids.”
“Sure,” Hadassah said. “I can put the pack on the front of me and carry one on my back. But are you up for it?”
“My head hurts, but I’m okay. I saw you favoring your arm.”
“I think the dog fractured it, but I can use the other well enough,” Hadassah replied.
They hobbled along at a quicker pace with the children on their backs. Hadassah and Tameka took turns holding Lucia. While on Hadassah’s back, the girl clung to her neck a few times and fell asleep once.
Hadassah’s knees threatened to buckle, not only from the weight of the girl, but under the weight of guilt for what she did to the dog. And how much she felt like a coward when she saw Zeke get shot. She rehearsed different ways to phrase what she had to say during the debrief, scraping for something that wouldn’t make her feel sick.
Dave contacted as soon as the sky began to brighten. “The others just left in the van, and it’ll be another two hours until the next van comes. Give us your coordinates and we’ll meet you.”
Matthew read the coordinates off his watch, then paused to rest in the growing light. “We’ll have to start again in a few minutes, but I’m as tired as I’ve ever felt.”
Lucia looked up at him pleadingly. “Please, sir, we cannot stay in one place. The guards may be on our trail and all the animals...”
“I understand your concern, but if we’re going to get you back, we need to rest for a minute,” Matthew said. “Just long enough to catch our breath, then we’ll go.”
“We’ll walk, won’t we Carlos?” Lucia
said.
“I don’t want to stay here,” Carlos said. “I want to see my brother.”
“If you’re okay to walk, then we’ll go right away.”
By the time they connected with the others, Hadassah’s arm throbbed so intensely her vision began to blur and she felt nauseous. Although it was a joyous reunion when Carlos saw Maleek, Hadassah could do little more than feign a smile and hold her arm.
As they walked back to the rendezvous point, Lucia walked beside her rather than with the others.
“Thank you for risking your life to save us,” Lucia said. “I’ve seen the power of God in ways I never have before tonight. But I’m afraid He’s mad at me.”
“Why, Lucia?”
“I don’t want the pastor to hear. He’ll be mad at me too. I’m afraid because of the drug lord. He... well, he did things to me, at night sometimes, and, um... I tried to enjoy it so it wouldn’t hurt so bad, and I’m scared God’s mad at me for that.”
Hadassah’s eyes welled up as she heard this confession. “Can I hold your hand, Lucia?” She stretched her good arm toward the girl.
“Yeah,” Lucia replied.
“That man’s sin toward you was horrible, and I’m so sorry you had to endure it, but I assure you God is not mad at you for trying to... to navigate your way through someone else’s sin against you. What that drug lord did to you was not your fault. But you’ll need to see a doctor.”
“I don’t want my family to find out,” Lucia said, fighting back a sob. “Please don’t tell them.”
“I know you’re scared to tell your family, but they’ll be a lot less angry than you think. You need to tell them.”
The girl cried. “He was getting ready to send us away.”
“What do you mean?”
“I heard him on the phone one night. He was talking to Vladimir, Vladimir, oh, what was his name?”
“Vladimir Therion?” Hadassah asked.
“Do you know about him?
“Just bits and pieces.”
“He said that there was room for Carlos and me on the next cargo ship. I think that’s how the other children disappeared. I’m glad you came to get us.”
“I’m glad too.”
“I thought for so long that he loved me. Why would he want to send me away? What did I do wrong?” The young girl cried again.
Hadassah took hold of her hand. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Lucia.”
WHEN THEY WERE ALL climbing into the van, and expressing relief over a mission accomplished, Hadassah knocked her arm against the door. She cried out in pain even with her best efforts to constrain herself.
“Come on, Haddy,” Hyun urged when she heard the story of how the dog bit her. “You’ve got to get your jump suit off.”
“It can wait,” Hadassah insisted. “We should get these kids back to the city first.”
“No, it can’t wait,” Dave said, “and I’ll cut the sleeve right off of you if you can’t pull it off. I can see how much it’s swollen from here.”
The van bumped down the dirt road as Hyun and Dave helped Hadassah get her arm out of the sleeve of the jumpsuit. She tried her best not to make a sound, but she groaned loudly as they pulled the fabric away from her swollen forearm. The sight made her weak in the knees—the broken bone pressing against her skin, the skin swollen and bruised to a deep purple.
“That’s a break,” Hyun said to Dave.
“Take my phone, Hyun.” Hadassah pulled it out of her pocket, but in all her shaking she dropped it on the floor of the van.
“Whatchu want me to do with this?” Matthew asked as he caught up her phone.
“There’s an x-ray app. But only I can access it—biometrics and all. Can you hold it for me?”
It must have been both concern and curiosity drawing everyone around Matthew while he held the phone over Hadassah’s right arm. She accessed the x-ray application and waited for the image to appear. A full break of one bone, and a fracture in the other.
“Cool,” Carlos said.
“This needs a splint,” Dave remarked. “Is there anything in the van we could use?”
The driver said he had a few six inch one-by-fours and some strips of canvas in a bucket somewhere in the back.
“How tight are you going to make the splint?” Hadassah asked.
“Tight enough, girl.” Dave handed her an extra plank of wood. “This is for your teeth if you need it.”
“I should be okay without it.” She didn’t want to make a scene in front of Carlos and Lucia—they had been through enough.
As Dave and Hyun wrapped her arm in the splint, Hadassah asked the Lord to help her bear the pain. At one point she thought she would cry, and a few of her tears did manage to escape, but she kept her composure.
“Part of me wishes you hadn’t come,” Pastor Jorgé said suddenly in the lull of conversation. “These guys are going to come looking for my church family and me because we left without paying the ransom they asked for.”
“I think once you hear the whole story you’ll feel differently,” Matthew said.
“Si, Señor,” Carlos said. “I don’t think they’ll be coming for us.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and tell him what happened after we met you,” Matthew said.
So Carlos told the story, as only a twelve year old boy could, of how they had been worshiping the Lord and then were cut free from their bonds, and how Zeke had been shot right in front of them then came back to life again talking about Jesus and heaven and a way for them to escape.
“Wait,” Pastor Jorgé said, “I thought you said your friend is dead.”
“He is, Pastor Jorgé,” Matthew said. “He said he couldn’t wait to get back to heaven and to Jesus’ presence; he distracted the guards while we slipped away.”
“They were probably so scared when they saw him,” Carlos said.
Pastor Jorgé sat agape as if he was trying to process such a story. Hadassah cried silently at the retelling.
Even Dave was teary-eyed “That is the craziest thing I have ever heard.”
“The Lord is going to be doing something special through all of you,” Pastor Jorgé said, “something the world has never seen before.”
HADASSAH WAS ADMITTED to the hospital in Puerto Vallarta to get a cast on her arm. She and Paul were released within an hour of each other.
“Here’s some good news,” Mr. Cooper announced as they all congregated outside the emergency room inspecting the cast and bandages. “We’ll have our post-ops debriefing on the beach. Pastor Jorgé has a friend with a resort for Christians on furlough, and he offered us half price.”
“Wow, so what’s the bad news?” Christina asked.
“You guys will need to help me pay for it,” Mr. Cooper confessed. “I’m over budget after these hospital bills.”
There were more than a few blank faces in the crowd. Not many of them came from well-to-do families.
“I can pay for mine,” Hadassah offered.
“I’ll pay for two,” Christina said.
“I think I can swing the same,” Dave said.
“So do I,” Hyun said.
“Thanks, everyone. I’ll be contacting Mr. Murray after the debrief, and he’ll let the board know what happened,” Mr. Cooper said. “We may get reimbursed.”
Chapter 32: Resort
THE RESORT WAS EVEN more expansive than the drug lord’s compound. It was an airy, cream and terra cotta mansion set on a hill jetting into a glistening sea. There was a Jacuzzi bath in every suite, soft towels, cool tile underfoot and sea views from every window. Many of those they rescued from the compound the night before also stayed at the vista and basked in the longed-for peace and presence of the Lord lingering here.
The debriefing had its tense moments, even in those pristine surroundings. For a while Mr. Cooper seemed angry, as if the operation had been a failure. When Hadassah recounted what she did to the dog, she felt as if she would throw up, especially as she glanced at the faces of her tea
mmates. The desire to lie about the events wormed within her. She stopped, then closed her eyes and prayed. It took every ounce of strength not to break down crying, but she prayed for forgiveness and for grace even as she relayed details to the team.
“While I hate the idea of any of God’s creatures being harmed,” Mr. Cooper said, “that animal was trained to kill any one of you it could catch. It had been corrupted beyond its natural tendencies. Still, in the future, I want all of you to avoid retaliation. That’s not our calling.”
When it came time to tell about Zeke, Mr. Cooper asked Matthew, Hadassah and Tameka to give an account. With each version of the story more tears were shed, but Hadassah sensed a new, unshakable faith rising up in the group.
“So all three of you attest that Zeke was dead and then came back to life again,” Mr. Cooper verified.
“Yes, sir,” each of them said in turn.
“And then he went to distract the guards while you three walked up the stairs, out of the house and off the compound with José and the children?” Mr. Cooper asked.
“That’s what happened,” Matthew said.
“Did the alarm go off when you walked out of the house?”
Matthew shook his head. “No, sir.”
“The only sound we heard after we left was the second gunshot,” Hadassah added.
Then Mr. Cooper told them about the earlier portion of the operation.
“The alarm kicked in because of a failsafe. The storm cut the power, and then we cut the power, but the drug lord had one of the doors rigged, which triggered the generators and then the alarm. This was something Pablo didn’t anticipate, nor could we have expected him to know, so we cannot hold him accountable. How was José?”
“The dude was inexperienced, but genuine,” Matthew said. “I don’t think he jeopardized us in any way.”
“I’ll be meeting each one of you for an individual debriefing over the next three days,” Mr. Cooper said, “but no more meetings for today.”
Hadassah decided to unwind along with everyone else on the long porch overlooking the ocean. A few socialized, but most, like her, had earphones in and Bibles, or other books, open.