* * * * * * *
They talked for hours, outlining a final agenda, naming key players and responsibilities, and setting up a time line to put the plan in place. The last thing they had to decide was when the new president would address the people of the United States.
“It will take FEMA several days to distribute the equipment throughout the country,” the vice president announced. “It’s a huge problem, getting working television receivers and satellite systems out to all the cities and towns. We don’t want people to congregate any more than they have to—larger crowds are unpredictable and so much harder to control. We want a television in every small town. We’re talking a couple hundred thousand systems. It will take a little time.”
“Four days,” the old man prodded.
They agreed that that would work.
Their business complete, the meeting started to break up.
“There is still one problem,” the new vice president said as the group started collecting their things. They hesitated awkwardly, throwing a glance or two in Fuentes’ direction.
“This is private,” the vice president said to his new president.
The president was excused. He left without comment and the group sat down at the conference table once again.
“We think the SecDef is alive,” the vice president announced. “Not only alive, but suspicious. And we can’t find him anywhere.”
The old man’s eyes flashed in anger. “You will take care of him, I am sure.”
The vice president nodded. “He’s an old friend. I think I can round him up.”
“And what about King Abdullah?” one of the women wanted to know. His absence from the conference call had not gone unnoticed among the group.
The old man sat back and thought a moment about his good friend, the Saudi king. The group sat in awkward silence. They all knew what he would do.
“You’re going to kill him?” the vice president asked.
The old man stood up from the table. “I don’t think I’ll have to. He’s stupid. He’s too aggressive, and always there’s his foolish, blinding pride. I don’t think I’ll have to do it. We’ll simply let him kill himself.”
THREE
Twenty-One Miles East of Little Rock, Arkansas
What started as a cool morning, with temperatures just below the freezing mark, quickly heated up to a humid 73 degrees Fahrenheit. The sky was clear, the air still, almost like it was waiting for something new to come. The sun rose higher in the pale sky, beating straight down on Bono’s face.
Just before losing consciousness, the young lieutenant had made an important decision. Knowing he was slipping away, he’d crawled off the road, not wanting to be found by other travelers when he wasn’t in a position to defend himself. Dragging his body painfully between the strands of a barbed wire fence, he’d dropped into a thicket and immediately passed out.
The day wore on and the sun beat down, burning the left side of his face, his right side mashed into the thistles and dirt. He sweat, he threw up across his chest, he mumbled and called out, but he never regained consciousness. By afternoon, a violent seizure racked him and he almost choked on his tongue. Sporadic spasms came and went, convulsing him into a painful ball.
Along the road, several people moved east and west. None of them saw him, though a couple of people thought they heard someone calling as they passed.
Afternoon came and a band of clouds started building in the west. Rain was coming. The sun dropped toward the western horizon and the temperature fell.
As twilight approached, Bono opened his eyes and shivered. Focusing his entire will and using every ounce of energy that he had left, he opened his backpack, his hands shaking violently, his arms barely able to even move, and pulled out his field jacket. Fighting against the crippling pain inside his stomach and chest, he struggled to spread the jacket over his shoulders—it felt like it was made of lead—then dropped his head onto the dirt.
He was so thirsty. Brutally thirsty. His stomach muscles were tied in knots, painful spasms racking him. He heaved at the dryness, but there was nothing left inside him to throw up. He tried to swallow. His tongue and throat were so swollen it was like trying to swallow sand.
“No, no, no,” he almost wept, physical and emotional misery racking him. “Please, whatever it is, I cannot die here. Please, help me to get home first. If it’s Your plan, then I accept it, but please don’t let me die out here by myself. Caelyn will never know what happened to me. Please don’t make Ellie spend the rest of her life wondering what happened to her father. Please, I do not ask this for myself, I only ask it for my family.”
FOUR
East Side, Chicago, Illinois
The sound of thudding footsteps rolled down the narrow hallway of the high-rise apartment building. Sam, lying atop a sleeping bag just a few feet from the apartment door, was immediately awake. He sat up and listened carefully to the sound of the passing footsteps, taking measure of them, his nerves on edge, his breathing light. Four people, maybe a few more. Adults. Most of them heavy treaders, probably men. None of them were speaking. They knew where they were going and what they needed to do. The sound faded, the stairwell door slammed, and they were gone. Sam checked his watch: 3:45 a.m. He stretched, swallowed against the dryness of his mouth, and lay back down. Then, knowing he’d never get to sleep again, he stood.
Luke and Ammon were asleep inside their bags. Luke’s breathing was heavy. It almost sounded sedated. Ammon was curled up, his sleeping bag pushed down around his waist. Sam’s military boots and jacket were lying on the floor beside him. Moving quietly, he pulled on the leather boots, ran the laces behind the quick-lace eyelets, stood, and pulled on his jacket. Turning for the door, he sensed Azadeh’s outline in the darkness and stopped.
“Hey, Azadeh,” he whispered, not wanting to wake up his brothers.
She barely nodded to him, afraid to speak.
He moved toward the door. She followed closely. “Where are you going?” she whispered once she got very close.
“Thought I’d go up on the roof and take a look around.”
She moved a little closer to him. “Can I come with you?”
Sam hesitated. “I don’t know. It might be better if you stayed here.”
She dropped her eyes. The whites, large as they were, were barely visible in the dark. “I’ve been inside this apartment for a very long time. Days. It seems much longer. If I could please just come with you, it would . . .” she hesitated, searching for the right word, “it would mean good things to me.”
Sam smiled, wondering what word she had been searching for. “It’s going to be cold up there.”
She was already holding her coat and she stepped toward the door. He helped her put her coat on, then pulled the door back. The hallway was empty and he led the way toward the stairs.
* * * * * * *
The moon, a quarter full, waning and burning orange, was already low on the western horizon when they came out on the roof. With no city lights to drown them out, a million stars filled the night sky. A light wind was blowing from the south, and Sam sniffed the air. “A cold front is going to move through sometime in the next day or so,” he said.
Azadeh nodded, pretending to understand though she had no idea what he meant. Sam watched her, knowing she was faking it, and explained. “A south wind at this time of year and up here in the north,” he pointed to his left, “usually means a low pressure system is moving through. The wind circles around low pressure in a counterclockwise direction.” His voice trailed off. He had lost her again. “It’s going to turn cold in the next day or two,” he said more simply.
Azadeh nodded. That she could understand. She shivered anyway. “It seems cold right now,” she said.
Sam reached out and pulled her collar up around her ears. “Is Chicago colder than Iran?”
Her hair was loose and it blew behind her, falling in shadows down her back. Her face was almond colored in the moonlight and her eyes were larg
e and bright. Sam felt his stomach tighten as he looked at her as he tried hard not to stare. “I grew up in the mountains,” she said. “My village was in the Agha Jari Deh Valley. Remember? You have been there.”
Sam remembered very well.
“I am used to the cold.” Still, she shivered. Sam knew that she was scared.
“It’s going to be OK,” he told her.
She looked at him and nodded. “I think it will.” She brushed a strand of hair away. “I saw what you did on that first night, back in the car. I saw what happened to your brother. I saw what you did for Kelly Beth. I don’t understand it. It makes me feel . . . awkward. Is that the right word? I don’t think that it is. It makes me feel funny. There is a strangeness in my chest. It keeps me warm. It makes it so I can’t sleep. I wonder what it means.”
Sam hunched his shoulders, struggling for his own words. He was not good at this and it scared him that he might say the wrong thing and screw it up. “It’s going to take a while to understand it. But it has to do with God. With Allah. He is real. Do you believe that?”
“I know that He is real.”
“Do you believe that He can hear us? Do you believe that He can answer our prayers?”
She looked away. “I have prayed my whole life.”
Sam waited, noticing she had left his actual question unanswered. But her face was softer now and not so full of fear.
“God does answer us,” he told her. “God always hears and answers our prayers.”
“Are you a messenger from Allah?” Her voice was full of doubt and wonder.
“No, no, no.” He started laughing. “I’m no messenger from Allah. I’m just a man, just a kid, really, at least that’s how I feel. I’m just like you are, Azadeh, trying to figure this whole thing out.”
“But the prayer you said. You promised your brother he would live.”
Sam bit his lip and looked away. He had no idea what to say. This wasn’t something he was comfortable with. He was a doer, not a talker, and someone else, anyone else, was far better at explaining this kind of thing. “It will take a little time, Azadeh, before you can understand,” he finally said. “But that’s OK. You’ve got all the time in the world.”
He watched her, waited, and, when she didn’t answer, he turned and walked toward the corner of the building, looking around. She followed, keeping a few steps behind. The city had fallen silent below them. The sky was alive and bright, the ground nothing but an empty black hole. Looking west, Sam could barely make out the outline of downtown, the skyscrapers reaching high enough to blot out some of the stars, leaving square shadows against the bowl of light. Looking north, Lake Michigan was another black hole. No lights but the setting moon and stars. No noise now. Perfectly quiet. He took a breath and held it. It was almost beautiful. So peaceful. So serene.
Azadeh moved beside him and touched his shoulder, pointing east. “Look at that!” she whispered in surprise.
Sam turned and looked. Lights! Man-made lights along the shoreline! They were clustered in a row that seemed to stretch two hundred feet or more. A long way away, maybe four or five miles. Lights. That meant electricity. Which meant, what? He didn’t know. Civilization? Maybe. At least it was a start.
He stared, his mouth open, then grabbed Azadeh by the hand and said, “Let’s go.”
FIVE
East Side, Chicago, Illinois
It was getting lighter now, sunrise less than an hour away. They were heading east. The streets weren’t empty, but they were relatively quiet: a few clusters of people here and there, a few fires—an old warehouse had burned down, but it was only smoldering—and a row of barricades, which Sam helped Azadeh climb over. They walked another forty minutes. A couple of miles away from the shoreline, the streets became noticeably more crowded. Word had spread. Lights along the shoreline! Getting closer, Sam could smell the lake: seaweed, wet sand, humid air. Azadeh stayed close to him, her hair tucked underneath the hood of her overcoat, the buttons tight around her waist. Moving toward a large intersection, they turned right and immediately stopped.
Two blocks ahead of them, an enormous crowd had gathered. Noise. Sometimes screams. Fights were breaking out. Smoke—it looked like tear gas. Behind them, they heard the pounding of footsteps as a group of people ran toward the massive crowd. Sam immediately pulled Azadeh to the side, pressing her against the wall of the nearest building, letting the roaring crowd go running by. A dilapidated antique shop was on his right. He approached it, broke the window on the door with his elbow, reached in and turned the lock, pushed the door back, and pulled her inside. The room was dark, though there was a hint of light now, the eastern sky turning light pink and orange. The shop was musty and mostly filled with junk. “Stay here!” Sam commanded. “Lock the door behind you, then go into the back room. There has to be a rear entrance to the building. Find it, then stay here. If anyone comes through the front door, and I mean anyone, you run out the back. You understand me, Azadeh? Go out the back. There has to be an alley back there. Find a place to hide and wait for me.”
“Don’t leave me here,” she whimpered. “Please don’t leave me here alone!”
“Azadeh, you’ll be OK. No one’s going to come in here. If they do, do what I tell you and go running quietly out the back. But it’s important, Azadeh, that you not talk to anyone. They will know where you’re from. Normally, that’s not a problem. Might not be a problem now, but we can’t take the chance. These are not normal times. There is no normal anymore.” He stopped and looked toward the broken window. Another crowd of people ran noisily down the street. He turned back to face her. “Are you OK?” he asked.
“I’m OK. I stay here. If anyone comes, I go out the backdoor and wait for you.”
“That’s right, babe.” He stopped and looked around, suddenly embarrassed. He knew that he was blushing. His dad had called his mother babe, but Sam had never called a woman that.
He held her shoulders. Then he turned and walked out the door. She followed him to the doorway and looked out, but he was quickly swallowed up in the shuffle and panic of the growing crowd. She stood at the door a moment longer, looking out through the broken glass. She then turned away, slipped behind the shop’s counter, leaned against the wall, and slid down to the floor.
SIX
Twenty-One Miles East of Little Rock, Arkansas
The rancher found Bono lying in a ditch, surrounded by his own vomit and coated in sweat. He watched him from the saddle of his horse without moving toward him, suspicious, even angry at finding the stranger who had passed out on his property. Probably a drunk, the rancher thought. Maybe someone running from the law. Maybe worse. Maybe he was one of those men who’d joined up with the tribes that were forming in these parts, some of them violent, most of them crazy, all of them growing desperate. He held his horse back and watched the stranger closely, noting the sickly face and short hair. Seeing the military clothes didn’t help to ease his suspicions, for he doubted they were real; lots of losers hung out in secondhand fatigues they’d picked up at the army surplus store. He’d known more than one liar who claimed he was in the army when the closest the liar had ever come was walking by the recruiting station on his way to the Red Cross to give a pint of blood for thirty bucks.
A little pressure against the mare’s ribs was all it took to move her forward. She stepped over a narrow ditch and stopped again as he leaned forward, crossing his arms atop the saddle horn. He noticed the three-day assault backpack, coyote-tan and clean, then the insulated pouch of water. He studied the equipment hanging with carabiners from both sides of the backpack, all well maintained and clean.
Quickly dismounting, he dropped the reins—the young mare was as trustworthy as his dog and wouldn’t go anywhere. He patted her neck without thinking as he passed and moved quickly toward the stranger.
The young man was almost lifeless, his breathing shallow and slow. The rancher leaned toward him, then pulled back from the smell. Turning his face, he took a deep breath
, then pressed two fingers against the young man’s neck, feeling his pounding pulse. Lifting the soldier’s head, he started talking to him. “Hey there, buddy. Can you hear me?” He gently patted his cheeks. “Are you in pain? Can you hear me?”
The dark-haired soldier didn’t move. The rancher quickly wiped his right hand across his jeans to clean his fingers, cradled the soldier’s head, and opened his right eye. The pupil quickly dilated but stared past him, still not seeing. He could feel the soldier’s cold and clammy skin under his careful hand and he gently laid Bono’s head down.
He whistled to his horse. The mare, dark with white socks, lifted her head and stared at him but didn’t move until he whistled a second time. The rancher held his breath against the smell of human waste and vomit, and strained against the soldier’s weight. Sensing his burden, the horse almost knelt, making it easier for him to lift the soldier across the back of the leather saddle. Working quickly, the rancher gathered up the backpack and small sleeping bag and tied them to the saddle with leather straps. He pulled the reins over the black mare’s neck and she lowered her head, allowing them to fall across it. The rancher held on, then started jogging. He wasn’t young anymore, and he was a little overweight as well; it was only a couple of minutes before he was panting like a dog. The horse easily kept up with his pace, moving gently to keep her load from bouncing on her back.
Looking back, the rancher watched her smooth gait and reached back to pat her neck again. A good animal. Smart. Sensitive. One of the best horses he’d ever owned.
* * * * * * *
Fifteen minutes later, he led the horse and unconscious soldier through a wooden gate at the back of his yard. A large wooden barn, built by his grandfather, was on his left. Metal buildings and granaries were on his right. The area around the outbuildings was paved with asphalt and cement. The farmhouse, a large, brick rancher with a four-car garage and peanut-shaped swimming pool, was straight ahead. A little boy watched him from behind a low fence that separated the farm buildings from the grass, then turned and ran inside. Seconds later, a middle-aged woman exited the house and ran toward her husband. “My goodness, Reed—” She stopped short. “Are you OK? Who is that? Is everything all right?”
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