by D. I. Telbat
The flashlight and NL-2 weren't in sight. By the flickering fires, he relocated Annette's still body and crawled to her. Two more explosions farther in the building, presumably from IDF drone bombs, shook the floor. He prayed for Corban, and even for Titus, who he'd intended to return for. But now that whole section of the building was smoldering rubble.
Nathan was bleeding from the brow, and part of his parka and shirt were torn through to his skin, which felt burned.
One of Annette's legs lay at an odd angle, but Nathan couldn't worry about limbs when their lives were at stake. Corban had said to save Annette, so he would.
With her in his arms, he climbed to his feet and stumbled out of the hole in the wall where the front door of the school building once stood. Women and children ran past him and across the street. Militants fired assault rifles at IDF soldiers who crouched on the pavement.
Nathan looked up and across the intersection. How was he ever to survive crossing the street? Gunmen fired recklessly, the chopper fired at anyone armed, and the IDF ground troops shot desperately at anyone who wasn't wearing an IDF uniform.
A scared Palestinian kid with an AK-47 ran past Nathan and aimed at him. The boy suddenly fell, but without apparent injury. Nathan rolled him over with his foot, and still saw no bullet wound.
"Chloe," he said aloud, and knew she was indeed watching.
With Annette in his arms, Nathan walked straight ahead to the north. He wouldn't approach Chloe's location directly so he didn't lead anyone to her, but he would pass nearby, keeping himself visible to her line-of-sight.
On the left, a Hamas killer fell. On his right, two IDF soldiers dropped. Nathan walked faster, aware that Chloe was tranquilizing anyone who aimed even remotely in his direction. The existence of a mysterious sniper already on the scene would concern the Israelis as more of their numbers were taken out.
The IDF gave a signal, collected their wounded, and began to pull back. But the Hamas militants were too disoriented to notice anything except who they would shoot next. In their zeal, confusion, and fear, they massacred one another in full view of Nathan, until he reached the other side of the intersection.
Before he moved behind the corner of Chloe's multi-story position, he looked back. The school building was on fire and two choppers were still firing into the debris. Corban had entered Gaza knowing full well the IDF was actively hunting Hamas terrorists and their missile launch sites. He was in God's hands.
It had been Corban who'd found Annette and gotten her to him. Corban Dowler had died as he had lived—giving life to others. Tears blurred his vision, but still, Nathan stared at the scene. How could a body ever be recovered from such destruction? And in a war zone? This view on this terrible night would be Corban's memorial in his mind. Nathan would see to it that those who followed—other selfless COIL operatives, other sold-out Christians—they would all know how Corban Dowler had lived and ultimately died, protecting the helpless, bringing wicked men to justice, sparing his friends while he bore the pain.
Corban Dowler was surely dead.
*~*
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Gaza / Israel
When Corban Dowler awoke on his back, he couldn't feel his legs. Before he opened his eyes, he ran quick mental diagnostics over his body. Pain above one ear. One shoulder felt broken. Maybe a couple ribs, too. But that shrapnel in his spine . . .
He coughed and felt blood on his cheek. That meant something internal had been injured, maybe a lung by a broken rib. Opening his eyes, he took stock of his situation. Smoke filled the air, but the fire that caused it was several feet away and diminishing. Concrete slabs had collapsed above and beside his head, almost crushing him. Wires that hadn't had electricity since Israel last bombed the infrastructure hung in his face like ugly tentacles.
Looking to his left and right, he saw no way out, and didn't know which way to go even if he could crawl over the concrete slabs.
Then the stench hit him. Death. Burning flesh. He remembered arriving at a Nigerian village a couple years earlier. Boko Haram had been there an hour before, raping and killing Christians. Anyone who had a non-Muslim name had been tortured. The houses had been burned, some bodies left in them. It had smelled like this.
Corban closed his eyes again and moved his head left and right. He prayed as he felt the extent of his injuries. Dying didn't bother him since his conscience was at peace, unburdened before the cross of Christ—because of the cross of Christ. At some point, he'd guessed he would have to retire from COIL . . . but not like this. Jenna, his blind daughter, wasn't yet in high school. Her brilliant way of seeing the world continued to astound her teachers and inspire her classmates. He prayed he wouldn't die before seeing her again.
And Janice—the only woman who'd loved him, even when he'd been around the world, focused on others, risking his life so others could live. Janice would understand why he'd died in a foreign land. She may not ever know which land, but she had prayed for his unsaved soul for years while they were married, and she knew him best now. Corban knew love only because he had been loved first—by Christ, and by Janice. He wished he could tell her that just once more.
It wasn't just love that made Corban, despite the pain, roll over onto his belly. He'd been ruining networks of crooks and devious diplomats for too long to see Crac Hassad escape this night. If nothing else, he wanted to know that the man had been captured or killed. Crac Hassad had to be stopped. Whatever the terrorist was up to in Gaza, the Gazan residents needed to see what could happen without Hassad over them. The Palestinian people needed life, and they'd never find life if Hamas was allowed to continue to use their streets, their homes, their clinics, their schools, their families.
Corban dragged himself over a steel beam. A new fire flared up, then died down again. He heard his feet clunk over the beam behind him, but now seemingly paralyzed, those feet meant very little to him, so he clawed forward.
Above, the rubble settled, sprinkling dust upon him. Other areas could settle as well, and crush him. He couldn't wait for rescuers. Perhaps days would pass before the Gazans arrived outside to search for survivors.
Someone called his name, but not his Muhammad name. The voice was distant, unearthly, as if from a dream. Shutting his mind out to the voice, Corban prayed for sanity, for clear thinking. The strange voice was an indication, he realized, of some sort of head injury.
Every time he moved, the nerves and bone in his shoulder pained him. And every time he breathed, his lung felt like it was about to collapse. But to stop was to die. He'd given the world his all for so long, he couldn't just lay still and perish now. God had given him a heart to preserve the helpless, so for Corban to do nothing would be to deny both himself and his God.
His fingers clawed through dirt and ash. The fires stretched behind him, and he dragged himself farther into darkness, into cold, into silence. It was some time after he'd begun to move forward that he realized he was completely alone—perhaps even dead, or dreaming. The earth below him was freezing, and no longer did the air smell of burnt flesh or charred debris. He paused and lay his cheek on the soil. Shivering, he wondered if he was going into shock.
A memory came to him. He'd once hunted with the Inuits of Northern Canada. A caribou had been shot, but only wounded in the spine. For two miles, they'd tracked the beast as it had crawled by its forelegs, desperately dragging its lower half. Corban was now that caribou, moving inches at a time, certain to die, seeking refuge, but finding no relief.
For hours it seemed he pulled himself forward, clawing a little more, and then drawing himself ahead. The pain in his collarbone and chest numbed him, and there were long moments of resting that turned into sleep, only to wake with a start, a purpose to complete some mission he couldn't quite identify. Behind him, that same voice called his name, drawing closer, like death stalking him through the blackness.
Suddenly, Corban stopped moving and tried to focus on what new thing he sensed. Voices. He'd been hearing them ahead for
some time. They spoke Arabic. Yes, he was in Gaza. Terrorists were nearby. There'd been an explosion. He was hunting Crac Hassad.
As he left the haunting voice behind him and drew closer to the voices ahead, he saw the light of a room which illuminated Corban's position in a shadowy tunnel. The silhouette of a man moved in front of the tunnel mouth, but the man didn't enter the tunnel where Corban was. The man was working on something, facing away from Corban.
"The conventional warhead is enough," the voice said in Arabic. "We can launch it without Sohayb. He said it was already programmed."
"Yes, Crac. Please, stand back."
"Launch it now! We are out of time!"
Corban grit his teeth. Crac Hassad. They were together again, and some further evil was afoot.
Moving past several drums, Corban dragged himself into the recesses of what seemed like a wide garage. Above him hung a model airplane. He pulled himself under it, inches above his face. Nearby, feet walked around the plane.
"Clear the rail!" one voice said.
"Open the doors," another instructed. "Knock out the posts and check the street."
No! Corban realized it wasn't a model airplane. It was a drone—a drone with missiles attached under its wings!
He leaned painfully on one elbow and reached up to cling to one wing of the aircraft. If it launched now, he would fly out with it. Clutching the flap, he worked his fingertips into the crack, where the hinge made a gap. The sharp metal cut through his skin before the end of the flap cracked and hung loosely on a metal pin.
In seconds, he could die, once they discovered him, but Corban wasn't about to allow Hamas to launch an armed drone.
Reaching up the side of the fuselage, he unscrewed an aerodynamic fuel valve. With a hose, he could have quietly siphoned the fuel, but there was no hose around him. Panting from the pain, Corban grasped the port side wing and hung from it by both arms. The drone tipped on its runner, and fuel poured from the tank, pooling on the garage floor. Tipping the drone farther, he emptied the fuel completely.
"What is that?" someone yelled nearby.
"Stop him! Get him!"
Corban was kicked in the ribs under his left arm. He released the drone and fell to the floor of the garage. The drone rebounded, then rocked off the runner, falling to its starboard wing. Hearing it crack, Corban knew he'd at least temporarily caused their terrorist attack to fail.
By one arm, he was dragged away from the drone and dropped against the foot of the stairs that led to the house interior. The burns and wounds that covered Corban's body opened up from the abuse, and he fought to remain conscious.
"Keep him alive!" Crac Hassad ordered. "Throw water on him. Launch the drone now!"
"We can't. Look, the wings are damaged."
"Fix it! Get more fuel!"
Someone doused water in Corban's face, and the shock of the moisture startled him to alertness. In his condition, he wasn't sure how he would stop these men, but he had to try something.
"What is this?" Hassad tugged at Corban's fake beard. "Muhammad? I should have known! Who are you?"
In rage and fury, the crazed man attacked Corban, slapping and punching him. Corban felt the blows, but through the shock of his other injuries, he felt the numbness that many spoke of when close to death.
"You may kill me." Corban hardly recognized his own voice. His throat was choked with smoke and dust from the tunnel. Hassad took a step back, panting. "But know this: you are killing a child of God, a servant of Jesus Christ, the only—"
He was punched in the mouth. His head fell against the stairs and he drifted to unconsciousness.
#######
Titus called and called to Corban, but Corban kept crawling away, through the flames, over concrete, beyond where Titus thought the school foundation ended. If it weren't for a slab of concrete that had crushed and pinned Titus' foot in the rubble, he would've crawled after Corban, but he was stuck sure.
For the first hour, there were others alive around Titus. They cried and fainted, then woke again. They called for help, men of terror now beggars for mercy, and one by one they died and fell silent. Titus yelled for Corban by name, but said nothing else. He'd lost consciousness sometime during the brawl in the lit room above, but his wits were about him enough now to realize a number of missiles had decimated the school building. He and his fellow sufferers had fallen into the basement.
When Titus noticed his foot was trickling blood, he realized he couldn't wait for help. He would bleed to death if he didn't free his foot, and that meant the thousand-pound piece of concrete needed to be shifted aside.
As the fires around him began to diminish, so did his light to work to free himself. Quickly, he gathered pieces of rebar and conduit and chunks of concrete to act as leverage. He stripped off his shirt to prepare a tourniquet, then tore away his pant leg to better see the damage. The pain radiated so much that he thought his whole foot had been crushed, but now he saw it was just the lower half of his foot in the combat boot that was smashed.
The last fire went out, and no one else cried for help. Totally alone in the darkness, Titus remained still with unexpected thoughts flooding his mind. Memories. Stubbornness. Fear. Denial. Loneliness. And now this. It was undeniable that he'd been preserved while others hadn't been. And that fact led to the idea that Someone had preserved him. But why? Because he'd begun to believe in God finally?
"Hell." The word came to his lips, giving him a chill.
Hell had been a fear of his for his whole adult life. Even before he'd become an international criminal, he knew he'd been born separated and distant from God. And since Titus had never given his life to God, only eternal separation had waited for him in death. But he no longer had that fear. Belief had changed everything. Christ had paid for whatever had separated himself from God. He had to find Corban to tell him. He had to find his brother and sister back in Arkansas. Everyone had to know the peace that was available through a spiritual surrender to God! Telling others had to be the only reason he was still alive.
Working by feel now, Titus used a piece of conduit to dig at the earth on one side of the slab that pinned him. As he removed the earth, one side of the slab settled lower, and the other side rose. He shoved pieces of concrete and rebar next to his foot to relieve the pressure as the slab move. It was slow work, measured by millimeters of progress. Twice, he thought he was free, and he pulled on his leg, only to realize he was still stuck. The wasted minutes required to recover from the agony of those attempts caused more blood loss.
Finally, the slab shifted into the earth and it fell free. He nearly blacked out at the fresh wave of pain from pinched nerves now coursing with life again.
Titus felt the wetness of blood dripping as he removed his cut boot and tossed it aside. He was disoriented and nauseous from the throbbing pain, but he worked quickly, wrapping his shirt around the crushed foot before he passed out.
With his foot bound in the shirt and with pressure applied to the areas of broken flesh, he relaxed, waiting for unconsciousness, but it didn't come. Instead, the pain lessened, and his next objective lay before him: Corban. Searching for Annette seemed a lost cause. She and Crac Hassad's people had surely been killed in the devastation. If Corban was the only one still alive, then Titus would find him. He had to tell the old man his efforts of relentless preaching had broken through his rebellious heart.
*~*
Chapter Thirty
Gaza
Annette, carried by Corban's man, gasped against his chest as she sobbed. Though she'd never met him before, it was enough to know she was safe. But Corban and Titus had perished. For the IDF, the mere collapse of the building hadn't been enough. The COIL operative and the still-masked Annette watched as rocket after rocket flew into the rubble, and explosions shook the street blocks away.
Pulling away from the agent who introduced himself as Nathan, Annette looked to the west. Titus had been so bold, so confident. The moment he'd arrived, she'd known he was there for h
er. Sure, Corban and Nathan had come first, but Titus was the lone wolf, the thug who had seemed to care for no one but his own bank accounts. His presence in Gaza meant the most to her. Now, he was dead. It was little comfort knowing his last act was to save someone else.
"The tunnel!" She turned to Nathan, who continued to watch the scene three blocks in the distance. "Nathan, there's a tunnel under the school!"
"Makes sense," he said. "Keep your voice down. English shouldn't be spoken for anyone to hear in Gaza."
"Didn't you hear me?" Annette turned him toward her. "They could've gotten out. There was a tunnel into Israel under the school!"
"Point for me." Nathan was listening now. "Which way?"
"That way. It's a long, long tunnel. I know it's there. They were holding me in Israel, then I escaped through the tunnel into Gaza. You've got to believe me!"
"I believe you. Just stay back." He pulled her out of the street. "Israel must know there's a tunnel. That's why they're hitting it so hard. I'm sorry, Annette. There's no way anyone could live through that devastation."
"What if you're wrong?" Annette licked her lips and tried to visualize the perimeter wall of Gaza. It couldn't be more than a mile away. "Where are the people watching over us?"
"Back that way." He pointed toward the school. "Tunnel or not, I've got to get you back to Israel. We can't be found here."
"But, Titus . . ."
"We've waited long enough for them. They're gone, Annette. They're in God's hands."
For the first time, Annette noticed a strange gun in Nathan's hand, one of the non-lethal weapons that Corban's people used.
The assault on the school decreased, then ended. When Annette and Nathan reached the intersection, someone above them whistled. Annette looked straight up at a head poking over the edge of the roof."