The Heaven Trilogy

by Ted Dekker

  Shannon drew a deep breath and lined his sights up with the exposed fuel tank under the tail boom of the old Bell. He could easily place a bullet into that skin. Kaboom! And what if it didn’t explode? They would be over him like a swarm of bees.

  You just killed a man back there, didn’t you? Yeah, and you still have his blood on your fingers. You’re definitely a sicko.

  Shannon fought a sudden surge of nausea. He closed his eyes and fought for control. The black fog swarmed his mind. For a moment he felt disoriented, and then he was okay. He glanced around in the night. Yeah, he was okay.

  He snugged his finger on the trigger, but it shook badly and he took another deep breath. He applied a little pressure to the trigger.

  The Kalashnikov suddenly jerked in his arms, crackling in the calm night air.

  A thundering detonation lit the dark sky, mushrooming with fire. The helicopter’s tail section bucked ten feet into the air, flipped once as it rose, reached its apex, and slowly fell. He removed the rifle’s butt from his cheek and gazed, open mouthed, at the sight. Then the flaming wreckage crashed to the ground, and pandemonium erupted in the camp.

  Shannon quickly pressed his eye back to the sights and swung the weapon to his left. Black silhouettes jumped about, scrambling for the rifles. Shannon exhaled, lined the sights with one figure, and pulled the trigger.

  The gun jerked against his shoulder. The man fell to his knees and threw his arms to his face, shrieking.

  Then Shannon began to shoot on count—one, two, three, four—each time pulling the trigger, as if the dancing silhouettes were clay pigeons and he in a head-to-head contest with his father. Five, six, seven, eight . . . On all counts but one—count six, he thought—a man staggered.

  When he reached the twelfth count, the firing pin clicked on an empty chamber. The guerrillas fled toward the jungle now. Shannon yanked out the spent magazine, slammed another into the rifle, chambered the first round, and swung the weapon to bear on the fleeing men. He squeezed off shots in succession, barely shifting the rifle to acquire each new target. All but one lurched forward midstride and fell to the ground short of the jungle. Only one escaped, number seventeen. Two, counting number six.

  Shannon’s heart hammered in his chest. Adrenaline flogged at his muscles and he staggered to his feet, his eyes peeled in the night, his fingers trembling.

  He blinked. Where was he? For a horrible moment he didn’t know. He was on the top.

  A voice groaned near the burning, twisted wreck that had been a helicopter, and it all came back like a flood. He’d killed them, hadn’t he? Sicko Sula.

  He threw the weapon down and tore for the trees. He would go now, he thought. To the river. To safety. And then he didn’t know to what.

  FOR THE fourth time the switch to the strange visions had been thrown, and Tanya was floating above her house. Each time, her father had worked alone down there. Each time, his voice was the only sound she heard. Each time, it said, “Look beyond your own eyes,” as if it was information she needed.

  Well now, what exactly could that mean? For starters, she could not look anywhere—she was trapped in her black box, dying. She could most definitely not look beyond, because there was no getting beyond the box. That was the whole problem. Father was saying look beyond, but he had locked the box. And as for the own eyes bit, well, she wasn’t positive she had eyes any longer.

  So the dream was nonsense. Unless it wasn’t a dream. What if she were really seeing her father down there and he was really telling her to look? Imagine that! Now, what would that be? A vision, maybe?

  Tanya heard a thumping below her, down on the ground near the house. Then it occurred to her that the sound came from her own chest, not from the dream or vision. Her breathing thickened and she might have shifted, but she’d lost touch with most of her body so she couldn’t be certain. The parts she could feel moaned in protest. Her throbbing arm, her aching head, her bent spine.

  If this were a vision or some episode of reality, then she should follow her father’s suggestions, shouldn’t she? She should look beyond her own eyes. Maybe look through the dove’s eyes, if indeed this was a dove through which she peered. And what could she see? The clearing, her father, the house with all its framework.

  Look beyond.

  A thought struck her and she dove toward the house. Her heart now filled her ears. Why hadn’t she thought of this earlier? If this were real, then she should be able to see the closet that Father had built. And the crate below. Her crate. Maybe she was already in the crate!

  She swooped low and flew between the rafters—through the living room to the framed hall. The stick closet looked tiny without siding. The box rested in the floor, minus its trapdoor. Sure enough. There it was. Her box. Or an image of her box. Either way it didn’t matter—she didn’t see anything new here. Only a box that should have been labeled The box in which I will lock up my only daughter until she dies.

  She hovered for a moment and then fluttered down into the closet—into the box. She might as well see the thing well lit. Knowing what kind of box sealed her fate might be a juicy tidbit, a welcome morsel in her last moments.

  The box looked very much like the one her fingers had helped her imagine. Except one small detail. There was a hole in one end. Father has not yet covered this one end, she thought. He’d better cover it. It won’t do to have snakes crawling through that there tunnel, ’cause someday I’m gonna be in this box.

  Tunnel.

  The image of a tunnel hit her head on, like a sledge to the forehead. Her head rang like a gong, setting off a vibration that hurt her teeth and buzzed down her spine.

  Instantly Tanya awoke, wide eyed, gasping raggedly. For a brief moment she stared into darkness, trying to remember what had woken her. Then she jerked upright and spun to the wall at her back. The episode had revealed this wall as a door leading into a tunnel—she knew that now. It was the kind of door that snugged in place. She would have to pull at it, the one thing she had not attempted in her despairing hours.

  Tanya whimpered and scratched at the stubborn wall. And what if the whole dream had been just that? Hallucinations spun by a despondent mind. She dug at the wood, willing her nails to find purchase. A long sliver ran under her right index fingernail and she gasped. Suddenly furious, she shifted back and slammed her right heel into the base of the wall.

  It caved.

  Warm, stale air filled her nostrils. It was a tunnel!

  Quaking with anticipation, she ignored the passing thought that creatures might have taken up residence in the passage. She yanked at the twisted wall, slid it behind her, and scrambled into the earthen hole.

  Like a wounded dog, she dragged herself on all fours away from the box. Away from that death crate. Where the passage led she lacked the strength to imagine, but her father had laid it in before the house had been completed. He wouldn’t end it in a pit of snakes.

  Tanya slopped through the muddy tunnel for a long time. A very long time, it seemed. Three times she encountered furry things that scurried off. Many times she heard tiny feet retreat before she reached them. But she was far past caring about minor details. Life waited at the end of this tunnel and she would reach it or die trying.

  And then she did reach it, so suddenly that she thought someone had flipped that switch in Frankenstein’s cellar again and initiated another episode. But the fresh air pouring over her head suggested that this was no vision. Night had fallen, the crickets screeched, howler moneys cackled, a jaguar screamed— she had reached the outside!

  Tanya spilled from the tunnel, past wadded brush, ten paces from a river. The Caura, she thought. A small dock confirmed her guess. The tunnel had surfaced south of the mission, near their dock. Tanya stood slowly, forcing her crippled muscles to stretch past their newly memorized limits. Then she stumbled forward, to the pier, to a canoe still swaying in the water. The Caura River fed within ten miles into the Orinoco, which then ran toward the ocean. Toward people.

 
She rolled into the wood craft, nearly tipping the whole contraption over, and ripped the tie-knot free. The river drew her out into its current slowly and she flopped to her belly.

  Then Tanya surrendered to the darkness lapping at her mind.

  SHANNON RAN all night. Up from the cliffs to the top of the mountain, and then down toward the river that would take him to the sea and to safety. The Orinoco, ten miles downriver, over the mountain from the plantation.

  The jungle lay heavy and the night dark, making his progress slow. But then it would also slow down any pursuit. He ran in silence, lost in the fog of the last day. His bones ached and his muscles felt shredded by the miles of savage terrain. The cruel ground had bruised his already calloused feet. But one thought pushed him forward: the thought that he would come back one day and kill them all. Every last one of them and any living soul that had anything even remotely to do with them. Shove a bomb down their throats maybe.

  The sun already climbed the eastern sky when he finally burst into the clearing that bordered the gorge. The sound of thundering water exploded in his ears. He approached the deep valley and peered down at the torrential river as he placed a hand on the rope bridge to steady himself.

  The Orinoco River had cut a two-hundred-foot swath into the valley floor. An old trail on the opposite side switched back and forth to the river below. The only way across was on the old rope bridge that swung precariously over the two-hundred-foot gap. He’d decided he was going to cross the swinging bridge, descend to the river, pick his way past the rapids, and then find something— a canoe, a large log, anything—to sail down the river.

  He looked at the boards strapped together on the bridge. The wood appeared rotten—the hemp rope frayed. The whole contraption looked as though it might go into the water at any moment.

  In fact, even as he looked a piece of wood split and sent a small fragment tumbling lazily to the river.

  He watched it fall. He would have to watch his footing as he crossed. Then another board bucked, splitting to its pale core, as if an invisible ax had attacked the wood.

  A chill flashed up Shannon’s spine. It all sprang to his mind in a brief instant: the fact that the wood wasn’t crumbling but being hit. By bullets!

  He spun around.

  The helicopter fired from a long distance—too far for accuracy—but it bore in quickly. The sound of its whirling blades was swallowed by the rapids, but Shannon couldn’t mistake the flashes erupting from its nose.

  For a moment Shannon stood shocked by disbelief, unable to move. In that moment another board fell to pieces, two meters from his planted feet. Two options streamed through his mind: He could retreat to the forest or he could race forward, across the bridge.

  With a sudden roar the gunship spun overhead, climbed sharply, and kicked its tail around. It was lining up for a second pass.

  Shannon leapt to the bridge. He grabbed the rope and scrambled down the sagging span, but the sudden movement caused the bridge to lurch wildly under his feet. In a moment of panic he almost missed the rope entirely and then found it quickly. To his right the attacking craft lined up on the bridge for another pass.

  Crossing had been the wrong choice—he knew it then, when the first bullets took a chunk from the board at his feet. He should have run back to the forest. Now he stood in the open, helpless, with a cannon playing the planks like invisible fingers on a keyboard.

  He was going to die!

  The thought immobilized him.

  THE PILOT watched the boards disintegrate before the boy and he eased the stream of lead to the right, knowing now that he could hardly miss.

  “Finish him!” Abdullah said beside him.

  The pilot quickly refocused his fire. The young man suddenly jerked back as if a huge hand had slammed into his chest. A spray of red blood glistened through sunlight. They had him!

  He flipped backward over the rope that supported the bridge and tumbled lazily through the air, his hands limp like a puppet’s. The fall alone would have been enough to kill a man, but neither of them could miss the gaping, bloody hole in the boy’s side.

  Abdullah groaned and the pilot blinked at the sound.

  And then, far below, the body splashed into the current and disappeared.

  “Around,” Abdullah ordered. Sweat poured from his face. His black hair with its distinctive white wedge lay plastered against his skull. “Around. We have to be certain.”

  The pilot guided the helicopter around to look for the boy. But the pilot knew he was wasting his time.

  The boy was dead.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Eight Years Later

  Monday

  “GOOD MORNING, BILL.”

  “Good morning, Helen. You sound good.”

  “I have news.”

  That made the pastor pause. “What kind of news?”

  “It’s starting,” Helen said. She paused. “Evil is thick in the air and it’s about to take this country by storm.”

  “I’m pretty sure those were your exact words eight years ago.”

  “I told you then and I’ve told you a hundred times since that the death of Tanya’s parents was only the beginning.”

  “Yes, Helen, you did tell me. And I’ve prayed with you. For eight years. That’s a long time.”

  “Eight years is nothing. God’s playing his pieces in this chess match and really I think it began fifty years ago. They’ve been moving and countermoving for decades up there on this one.”

  “A chess match? I hardly think we’re pawns in some game.”

  “Not a game, Bill. A match. The same match cast over each of our hearts. And you’re right—we’re not simply pawns. We have a mind of our own, but that doesn’t mean God isn’t telling us to move two spaces to the right or one space forward. Actually, it’s more like a whisper to our hearts, but it’s the thunder of heaven. It’s up to us whether we will listen to that thunder, but make no mistake, he moves the match. In this case, the match started way back. And one of the moves was for Tanya’s parents to go as missionaries to Venezuela. To bring truth to the Indians, yes, but perhaps even more, to bring Tanya there, so that she could become who she is.”

  “You honestly believe that Tanya’s parents were called to the jungle, left their church with great hopes and prayers, struck off for Venezuela, lived among the Indians for ten years, and then were murdered for the effect it would have on their daughter? Who, incidentally, is not looking like a great prophet or any such thing these days.”

  “Yes, Bill. I do think that was one of the primary purposes in all of this. Yes, that is how God works. A missionary is called to Indonesia perhaps as much for a young boy they talk to in the airport in New York on their way out of the country, than for all the people they preach to in the next twenty years in the foreign land. Perhaps that boy is a Billy Graham or a Bill Bright. God is quite brilliant, don’t you think?”

  Her pastor was silent on the phone.

  “But Tanya’s time is coming, Bill. You will see. It’s coming soon.”

  TANYA VANDERVAN sat flatfooted in the wooden chair, aware that her palms were sweating despite the cool air spilling from the vents mounted above. She shifted her gaze to the room’s single window overlooking Denver’s skyline from ten stories up, thinking that even here, within the whitewashed walls of Denver Memorial, she hadn’t managed to escape the jungle. Eight years earlier she had fled a heavy jumble of green, only to be led into a tangled web of confusion in her own mind. And now she had found another jungle— these concrete structures outside her window, built up around her like a prison.

  Thank God for Helen.

  She moved her eyes back to the older men sitting like a panel of judges behind the long table. The medical review board of Denver Memorial Hospital consisted of these three dressed in white smocks. They knew her as Sherry. Sherry Blake. Dr. Sherry Blake, six months and counting in the hospital’s intern program.

  And by their frowns, six months too long, and counting far too slow
. Most in the medical profession had emerged out of the stuffiness that had characterized hospitals in the seventies—these men had somehow missed the boat.

  Sherry crossed her legs and nervously ran a hand behind her neck. Her hair fell in soft curls to her shoulders now—no longer blond, but brown. It swept across her forehead, above eyes no longer blue but darkened to a hazel color. The idea had been her own, five or six years ago, based on the notion that if she changed her name and her appearance, maybe then, with a new identity, she could escape her mental turmoil. Maybe then she could escape haunting memories of Shannon. The psychobabble quacks had tried to discourage her, but she’d lost confidence in them long before.

  The idea had grown on her, until she’d become obsessed with altering her identity. She legally changed her name, dyed her hair, and wore hazel contact lenses. The change was so dramatic that even Helen had hardly recognized her. Comparing her high-school graduation picture to her new image in the mirror, even Tanya—Sherry—could barely see the similarities.

  “What I think Dr. Park is suggesting, Miss Blake, is that there’s a certain behavior becoming of doctors and other behavior that doesn’t fit the image very well.” Ottis Piper removed his eyes from her and peered through his glasses to the paper before him. “At least the image Denver Memorial considers acceptable. Boots and T-shirts are not part of that image.”

  Sherry raised an eyebrow, teetering precariously on the fence between total submission to these in white coats and bull-frank honesty.

  She knew submission would bode well for her career. Suck it up, baby. Swallow all their nasty foolishness with a yawning gullet. Tell them what they want to hear and get on with your life.

  Whatever’s left of it.

  Bull-frank honesty, on the other hand, might give momentary satisfaction but would most probably leave her wishing she had swallowed their nonsense after all. Unfortunately, the chill now washing over her head seemed to have frozen her mouth, and no matter how desperately part of her wanted to apologize, she could not.