Moments In Time

by Mariah Stewart

  Hobie did not respond.

  “Look, Hobie,” J.D. whispered, “if you’re feeling somehow responsible for this mess, I mean, because you organized the show…”

  Hobie turned his head wordlessly.

  “Are you scared then? Is that what it is?” J.D. leaned over and put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Look, Hobie, I’m scared witless. I’m scared I’m going to die in this bloody plane and all I can think of is Maggie, my children…”

  He choked up unexpectantly, his wife’s face filling his inner vision. He needed to see that face there, to feel her with him. He was terrified to his very soul that the worst would happen.

  “So if that’s it, Hobie, if you’re scared—shit, you’d have to be a moron not to be…”

  “I never meant for it to go this far.” Hobie’s words were uttered in a tortured whisper. “I am so sorry.”

  Certain he’d not heard correctly, J.D. leaned forward.

  “What did you say?”

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.” Enormous tears rolled down the big man’s face.

  “What are you talking about?” J.D. hissed.

  “It was only supposed to be the bus.” Hobie spoke as if only to himself. “They said they’d hold everyone on the bus, that was all, until Makubo let the prisoners go…”

  “You knew about this?” J.D. was incredulous. “And you didn’t try to stop them?”

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” he repeated. “They promised no one would be hurt. And by the end of the evening, they’d all be free… Ebbu, the others, would all be free.”

  “Ebbu?”

  “My brother. Of my father’s second wife. He was one of the elders of the Federation of Tribes. He was arrested last year.”

  “Why?”

  “The federation was banned fifteen years ago by Makubo. He wanted to force the tribes’ allegiance to him, but his actions only made them more defiant.”

  “What’s your role in all this?” J.D. demanded heatedly.

  “My father was an elder, J.D., and now my brother. My loyalties are with the federation.”

  “Did you plan this? Is this some kind of twisted revenge for your father’s assassination?”

  He shook his head. “No, J.D. I’ve been funding the organization for years, but I had no hand in planning this.”

  “Have you any influence with them? Can you stop it?” J.D.’s hand gripped the larger man’s arm like the jaws of an angry dog.

  “I don’t know.” Hobie shook his head uncertainly. “It may have gone too far…”

  “Try, goddamn you.” J.D. rose angrily and stormed down the aisle, finding an empty seat and plopping into it, and turned his face to the window, gazing into the darkness as the evening spread, thick as an oil slick, around the plane.

  Goddamn him, he thought. Jesus, if we survive this madness, I swear I’ll break Narood's neck with my own bare hands. I should have been able to live out the years with Maggie. He felt self-pity wash over him. I should have been able to watch our children grow up and grow old with Maggie, making jokes about our failing eyesight and our arthritic joints.

  Rick moved into the seat next to him. “You all right, mate?” he asked. “I mean, I saw you talking to Hobie.”

  “Did you hear the conversation?”

  “No, but it looked pretty intense.” Rick was incredibly composed, as if they were seated in his own living room.

  “It was.” J.D. fought the urge to tell him about Hobie’s involvement but could not resist asking “How can you be so calm in the face of all this?”

  “I have no one to leave behind but Sophie,” he said with a shrug, “and I know Maggie will take care of her.”

  “And if you make it and I don’t, will you take care of Maggie?” he heard himself ask.

  “You’ll make it. We’ll both make it,” he said confidently.

  “What do you know that I don’t?” J.D. asked bleakly.

  “I’ve felt death breath down the back of my neck on several occasions, old friend, but I don’t feel him there now. Maybe for others, but not for me. Nor you,” Rick told him solemnly as his eyes drifted toward the front of the plane. “Now what do you suppose he’s doing?”

  Hobie had made his way up the aisle and was attempting to speak with the man in the doorway, who appeared to be ignoring him. Another terrorist emerged from the cockpit, and Hobie took several steps toward him. The man raised his hands as if to push him back when suddenly a blaze of gunfire erupted. The door of the plane was blown open and, with it, the gates of hell.

  The hostages hit the floor as the incessant, thunderous barrage continued. They covered their ears against the unholy fury exploding around them, but it was useless. The noise level inside the plane was deafening. J.D. lay shaking long after the gunfire had ceased.

  “Up! Get up!” Someone, his accent distinctly American, prodded him. “You hit? No? If you can walk, go quickly. We’re not sure of just what we hit or if this sucker will blow.” J.D. didn’t need to be told twice.

  Making his way out, climbing over bodies without consciously realizing it, he searched the rapidly moving line as it snaked forward. There was Rick just disappearing through the doorway and Colin, he’d located him several feet in front of him. Where was Hobie? He had a score to settle with him.

  He was almost to the door when he saw, amid a pile of unmoving bodies, the bright blue shirt Narood had worn, now running rivers of red like water pouring from pinholes in a balloon. He stopped abruptly, then was pushed from behind.

  “Move, damn it!”

  “Oh, Jesus,” J.D. muttered, feeling sick to his stomach but unable to look away.

  “Move!” the voice behind demanded, two firm fists slamming into him roughly, propelling him toward the doorway, out into the night.

  The entire airport was now flooded with light and there was a sudden convergence of people and vehicles. Army personnel rushed into the plane he’d just fled, looking for survivors among the heap of bodies. Medics were everywhere, as were members of the press.

  “Are you hurt?” someone asked.

  “What?” he replied dumbly.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No.”

  “This way, please, sir. We’ve an ambulance waiting.”

  He pushed past the medic and wandered through the sea of reporters and film equipment. The same cameras that only a short twenty-four hours earlier had taped his performance now filmed his staggered steps. Microphones were shoved in his face from a dozen different directions.

  “J.D., can you tell us what happened?”

  “J.D., what was it like?”

  He walked past them, bewildered and barely hearing, and made no response. In the midst of the noise and confusion he saw Maggie’s face and thought he was hallucinating. He knew he must be suffering from shock and told himself it could not be her. But when she reached him and gathered him into her arms, he knew she was real, that the nightmare was over. Ignoring the chaos that swarmed around them, she led him through the airport and to a waiting car.

  “Take us to the nearest hospital,” she told the driver.

  “No,” he whispered, “the hotel.”

  “You should see a doctor, Jamey, the shock…”

  “The hotel,” he insisted, and she nodded to the driver to do as he asked.

  He had lain awake all night, shivering as from cold though he lay wrapped in the warmth of Maggie’s arms, overwhelmed by the events of the past day and night. He could neither speak of it nor could he close his eyes.

  It was midmorning before he slept and early evening before he awoke. Maggie had watched the televised accounts all day, the same scenes played over and over, the endless commentary. The same pictures of the plane on the darkened runway, the films of the rescue efforts by a multinational SWAT team, were repeated until she had memorized them.

  And each time it was rerun, the resolution was the same. All of the terrorists and four of the performers on board, most prom
inent among them being Hobie Narood, had been killed. The eyewitness accounts from his fellow hostages indicated that just moments before the rescuers broke through the door, Narood had gone to the front of the plane and engaged their captors in conversation. The speculation was that Narood had seen the SWAT team moving toward the plane from his window and had deliberately distracted the terrorists. By the time J.D. had awaken, Narood had been declared an international hero.

  “Jesus, I can’t believe it,” he all but shouted.

  “I should have turned it off,” she said through her tears, “and told you about Hobie myself, instead of letting you find out from the TV. Oh, Jamey, I can’t believe he’s dead.”

  “Better him than me,” he grumbled, sitting down beside her, eyes fastened to the screen.

  It took a moment for her to react. His remark was so out of character.

  “Jamey, I know this has been a terrible ordeal; every minute of it must have been hell,” she told him, “and I know how you must feel about Hobie…”

  “Bloody stupid bastard,” he muttered, “could have gotten us all killed.”

  “What are you talking about?” She wiped the tears away with a tissue, confused by the harshness of his reaction when she’d expected tears of grief for his old friend. “You mean when he went to distract the terrorists they could have turned on the rest of you?”

  “Distract them, my ass,” he growled. “He went to try to call it off.”

  “Call what off?”

  “The whole goddamned thing.” He could tell she hadn’t a clue.

  “I don’t understand,” she told him.

  “Maggie, Hobie was in on it. He knew about it, he agreed to it. He was a member of the organization, has been financing their efforts for years.”

  “What?!” She sat back in shock. “You mean—”

  “I mean our boy Hobie, our good best-buddy Hobie, was in on the whole bloody thing right from the start.”

  “Jamey, I can’t believe it.” She shook her head, “Are you sure?”

  “He told me, Maggie. He bloody apologized to me. And now they’re calling him a hero. Well, I’ll set them straight on that, you can bet your life on it.”

  She sat stunned and speechless, then slowly turned to him.

  “Jamey, you can’t,” she whispered.

  “What do you mean, I can’t?” he glared. “I can and I will.”

  “No, Jamey, please.” Her eyes had grown wide with fright.

  “Maggie, are you asking me to cover up for him? After what happened over the past two days? Maggie, had I not moved to the back of the plane when I did, I could bloody well be in a body bag right now,” he all but shouted at her, “not to mention that he was partially responsible for the most hellish hours of my life.” He rose and began to pace with aggravation.

  “But he’s dead, Jamey,” she said.

  “Yes, he’s dead, but he’s no dead hero.”

  “But, Jamey,” she pleaded, “Aden and the children. What will Makubo do to them if he finds out? He’s already rounded up the families of the other terrorists for an ‘indefinite detainment’…”

  He sat back down on the nearest chair and exhaled deeply. It had never occurred to him…

  “How do you know she didn’t know, that she wasn’t in on it, too?”

  “Aden did not know.” Maggie shook her head adamantly. “She called late yesterday afternoon after you left. She was infuriated with Hobie for sending her out of the city. It seemed his aunt was neither expecting her, nor was she ill. She didn’t know, Jamey, I’m certain of it. As long as Makubo continues to think Hobie’s a hero, she and the children will be safe.”

  He hung his head down, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.

  “Jamey, it’s been terrible—God, I can’t even begin to imagine what you and the others went through—but Hobie’s dead, Jamey. Aden and her sons shouldn’t have to suffer because of what he did, and she shouldn’t suffer more than she has. She’s lost her husband—you know how much in love they were. God, Jamey, if I lost you and then had to face the kind of consequences she’ll face if the truth gets out—”

  The soft knock at the door interrupted her impassioned plea, and J.D. walked slowly to the door, his mind a swirling whirlpool. Four men stood in the hallway. British Intelligence. American CIA. Two members of Makubo’s own internal intelligence agency.

  Maggie excused herself to take a shower, backing out of the room, her eyes begging for his silence.

  The interrogation had lasted two hours, and he was exhausted by the time the delegation had departed. He found his wife on the balcony, reclining on a lounge and staring into the vastness of the sea beyond. He sat down next to her and took her hands in his.

  “Is it over?” she asked without looking at him.

  “Yes,” he nodded.

  “Did you tell them?”

  “No,” he sighed deeply, “I did not.”

  She pulled him slowly to her and rested his head on her chest.

  “I know how difficult it must have been for you.” She very gently massaged the back of his neck.

  “But you were right. Hobie is beyond retribution, and his family would pay the price for his actions. As much as I despise what he did, causing his wife and sons to suffer would not change what happened. I would only hope that if I ever did something as ungodly stupid as he did, that someone would care as much for you and our children.”

  “How will you handle the press?” she asked.

  “With a very firm ‘No comment.’ ”

  “Do you think they’ll let you get away with that?”

  “They’ll have to,” he said resolutely. “No one can force me to make a statement. I’ve given my report to the authorities and I am not obligated to discuss it publicly with anyone else. And I won’t.”

  And for two years, despite the nightmares in which he had relived every second of the ordeal, he had held his silence. Arriving in Philadelphia, they had found the airport jammed with press, but he had walked past them stonily as if he did not see or hear.

  Once back at their home, he had immersed himself in his family. It had been weeks before he’d set foot beyond the fence that ran the length of the property and months before Maggie could convince him to leave the sanctuary of their home, even to visit his in-laws, so deep within him remained the fear of never seeing his wife or his children again.

  26

  “AH, SO HERE YOU ARE!” LUKE EXCLAIMED FROM THE doorway. “What a spectacle that was! Hilary left in a fine snit. You’ll be hearing from her lawyers, J.D., she did tell me to relate that to you. Rude, she was, about it, too, when she stormed out. Good for you, son, sticking to your guns… None of anybody’s business but yours, I say. But it was certainly an odd gamut you ran tonight. Lord knows you lost me for a time or two, what with your odd behavior. You feeling all right, you two?”

  “We’re fine, Mother,” he replied.

  “Well, the children are in their beds, Maggie, sleeping like angels, no need for you to tuck them in.” Luke had turned toward the door. “But I would ask you, J.D., to give a minute to Jesse if you would. He seems a bit out of sorts.”

  “I’ll be up in a minute,” he told her, and as his mother disappeared into the house, he turned to his wife, a thousand questions in his eyes and on his face.

  “Go tend to Jess,” she said softly, “then come back down and we’ll talk.”

  He nodded uneasily, afraid to speculate upon the outcome of the conversation yet to come.

  Maggie stood in the dark alone for a few long minutes, then walked into the room that only a brief time earlier had bustled with activity as the television crews had dismantled their equipment. She took off the high heels that had been bothering her all night and slipped into a pair of well-worn flats and walked through the quiet hallway into the dining room. She snapped on the lights and went to a small cabinet and lifted out first one, then a second goblet, and searched a drawer for a corkscrew. Opening a cupboard that was built into the w
all, she removed a bottle of wine and passed back into the living room and through the still-opened doors. Seating herself on the top step of the patio, she carefully set the crystal goblets next to her on the bricks and proceeded to open the bottle.

  Surely it had been an emotion-filled night, the ceaseless stream of visual images flowing past her inner eye, each following the other so effortlessly in their passing. The bright, shining moments of past joys had danced through her mind on gossamer feet, like fairy children in the night, specks of golden dust sprinkled in their wake.

  Yet it had been the dark moments that had held her gaze the longest, as if she had lifted the rock that had hidden each one from her consciousness and gazed in horror on the dark, writhing thing that had lay beneath it. At what point, she reflected as she poured some of the sparkling liquid into her glass, had it occurred to me that I cannot live without him?

  As she had poked and prodded each moment of pain, she had seen his face emerge to absorb her sorrows. It had been his arms that had held her through sleepless nights, his strength that had enabled her to rise each morning after. How could she conceive of a life without him? What life could there be for her if he was not a part of it?

  She mindlessly turned the glass around and around in her hands, watching the pale yellow liquid swirl closer and closer to the rim, but she did not raise the glass to her lips. She had been so resolute when she had arrived this evening, so positive that nothing could reach her. Yet every memory had left its mark.

  How can I forgive him, she asked herself wearily, and yet how can I leave?

  “Maggie,” he said from the doorway.

  She watched over her shoulder as he approached, gesturing to him to join her. As he lowered himself to sit, she poured wine into his glass and handed it to him. He, too, played with it but did not drink. They sat together for a very long, quiet time.

  “Thank you,” he said, breaking the awkward silence, “for jumping in there at the end…”

  “Thank you,” she replied, “for pitching in when you did. I mean, about Hallie…”