“Good evening,” said Dr. Williams as she came to stand behind a podium on a raised dais. “Welcome to the annual Administrator Appreciation Gala. I hope you are all as enchanted as I am by the choice of venue this year.”
Clapping filled the hall. Keith looked around and wondered why there were so many empty tables toward the rear of the hall. He found out an instant later when, to his horror, the students, families, and chaperones from their trip were escorted into the room and seated with the rest of the diners.
Jiggly, Cindee, and others assisting on the tour brought up the rear. People with gala staff badges seemed to be pushing them inside. Drew appeared at the doorway and shrugged helplessly at Keith. He had members of his team dressed as hotel staff and waiters but no one had anticipated everyone from Precious Treasure and the field trip being forced into the gala hall.
“We have expanded our guest list dramatically this year,” Dr. Williams continued, “and we are privileged to have some very special guests. We know that education’s only purpose is to brighten our children’s future. Therefore it is our distinct privilege to welcome a group of students from a small town in my own state. They are participating in a remarkable, coincidental field trip opportunity offered under the auspices of our Bible as Literature program.”
More applause broke out. Heads turned and eyes stared at the students. They reacted with ill-ease and embarrassment. Keith looked for Angel but couldn’t be certain who sat with the Walkers, Adam, and his parents. If Dr. Williams had ordered everyone to be herded into the gala hall, how had anyone avoided discovering the two remarkably similar “boys”?
He risked another glance at Drew. He lifted his eyes to the ceiling. Keith assumed that meant that somehow they had hidden their spare group member on the roof. Possibly David had taken Tom – or was it Angel? – with him on the rescue mission to the hospital.
The clapping subsided. Dr. Williams continued. “The Repository Program, of which the Bible as Literature Program is a part, has provided unique opportunities and challenges in its two eventful years. We have the best and brightest web designers creating exciting and interactive features within the Repository Archives. We are constantly expanding and updating.
“The idea is to tempt students to use the multidisciplinary tablets provided to them to enrich their educational experience. They will learn in ways denied to previous generations. They will receive consciousness-expanding opportunities. Don’t be surprised if their tablets replace those phones that administrators, teachers, and parents hate to see students staring at. You’ll be delighted to see them learning instead of merely staring.”
Only scattered applause greeted her words. Keith flashed back to Gail trying to destroy a radiation threat that happened to be his home’s front window, and to Jayna and her parents describing their fight to keep their own sons – her brothers – from killing them. He suppressed a shudder and wondered if the lack of thunderous applause meant others had experienced the dark side of tablet “consciousness expansion.” Dr. Williams’s smile stiffened a bit and she gave the crowd a stern look before continuing.
“Of course there have been times when the progress has not quite met our expectations,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “As with any radical new idea, perfecting it takes time, patience, and the full cooperation of all parties. We have encountered … resistance … to some plans implemented as part of the Repository Program that have resulted in setbacks.
“One major setback we encountered was opposition to psychological testing deemed essential to properly tailor our tablet updates and, indeed, critical future improvements to the Repository content. The tablets cannot assist students in their learning if a simple update might cause certain … shall I say … learning-challenged students? … to experience confusion or mental blocks to proper assimilation of the material. These issues must be addressed, regardless of who dislikes the changes that will be necessary to create the optimal educational experience for our children. As I said when I began, we only seek to brighten our children’s future. This is a mandate for educators, and we cannot allow anyone to dim that light.”
Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Keith had seldom been so proud of his father, sitting ramrod straight with the other administrators who had been imprisoned. Some of them cringed or ducked their heads as if they had been physically struck by Dr. Williams’s mention of the tablets and the psychological tests. Joshua Bradley stared straight at Dr. Williams and barely blinked. Keith saw that next to his father sat an empty chair, conspicuous in the now-packed hall. Was that a silent tribute to the woman who had died at Precious Treasure Campground as a direct result Dr. Williams’ school board meeting sweeps and arrests?
“This evening, however, we are not here to chastise educators who might not have kept the same pace as others in our march forward. We are here to praise and thank them for their deliberation – their hesitation to just fall into line when there may have been misunderstandings or unclear communication. We are also here to encourage them to trust us to do what is best for their students. We have tried to rapidly advance learning and the process of tailoring it to students.
“But in the end, individual school administrators are best suited to assist us in learning to know the minds of their students. We must tap into their wisdom to test and measure students. To do that, we must have their full cooperation. So we are recognizing administrators who caused us to pause and consider how to be better at our jobs. At this time I wish to recognize the administrators seated at the table directly in front of me.”
Jenny Kaine and her cameraman hurried forward and hovered, vulture-like, over the administrators.
“These people insisted that they would not administer our psychological tests. They stood their ground to ensure that their students were protected. And rightly so. Due to certain miscommunications and procedural errors, these people were subjected to an unfortunate experience. We do not intend to allow such courage and conviction to be mistaken for misconduct again. We regret their exposure to certain harmful environments through procedural errors the Department of Education had no control over.
“Let us applaud these people, and honor their sacrifice for our students. Please, everyone.” Dr. Williams gestured and most of the crowd stood up, clapping with what sounded like enthusiasm.
“Allow me also to present these small tokens of our esteem, if they will mount the platform and join me here.” A man with a tray full of small, jewelry-sized boxes came up behind Dr. Williams.
The administrators filed up to the dais and Dr. Williams handed them each a box. They returned to their seats amid the continuing applause.
Keith saw conflict on many faces, but his mind was perfectly clear and he did not move out of his seat. His father and the other administrators had been called roadblocks to progress and their imprisonment and abuse mere system snafus. The message was unmistakable. These people would somehow be brought into line and made to support the system. Knowing his father would never do that, he feared even more for him, trapped front and center in this room with an impenetrable crowd blocking any hope of escape and two implacable enemies slathering over him.
The assistant approached the podium and whispered to Dr. Williams. She nodded. When people sat down and fell silent again, she looked in the direction of Keith’s table.
“I mentioned earlier that we are honored by the presence of students and mentors participating in a field trip unlike any other we have encountered in the history of the Department of Education. Since we have the unparalleled opportunity to tap into this one-of-a-kind educational experience, it would be foolish to pass up a chance to pick the brains of these unorthodox but clearly influential mentors. I invite Doctors Nadir and Sophie Ramin to join me on the dais and share with us their vision for finding the Golden Testaments about which we have heard so much but learned so little.”
Jenny Kaine shifted her focus and her cameraman turned toward Naddy and Sophie.
“Don’t go,�
� Keith hissed. The crosshairs had shifted off his father for the moment, but Keith liked the target no better. “You don’t have to say anything. They have no power over you.”
“It is as your honored grandmother said,” Naddy relied, giving his wife his elbow. “This is the arena. It is our turn to face the lions.”
“Grandma?” Keith whispered. She gripped his arm.
“We need to pray,” she said. “We need to pray.”
“Been praying,” Keith said softly. “Got no more words.”
“Groanings which cannot be uttered,” his grandmother said. “That’s what we need now, anyway.”
Chapter One Hundred and Eleven – Angel on the Stairs
“How do you do?” Naddy unnecessarily adjusted the microphone and causing an ear-splitting squeal.
Keith saw his father, suddenly, on that first day when Talia had joined the faculty at Bradley Central, giving his ‘Bradley’s Best’ speech. He relaxed without knowing exactly why. Is it delusional, to think that everything is going to be okay? Is this the peace of God that passes all understanding?
“I am Doctor Nadir Ramin.” Naddy kept holding Sophie’s arm; close, protective. “I hold a doctorate in Levantine Studies. Please allow me to present my wife, Doctor Sophie Nadir, whose expertise is in far Eastern Studies. We have, for the past thirty years, prepared for this single objective: to find, to translate, and to disseminate a single, complete copy of the Holy Scriptures of the Hebrew and Christian cultures, informally known as the Bible. It seemed simple enough. We are experts at finding and translating artifacts. You can research our qualifications – our accomplishments – our successes.
“But the truth is, in this quest, we – my wife and I – have suffered failure after glaring, singular failure. We have never personally studied a single artifact that we sought in this quest. We have never touched, for more than a moment, any of the tablets that are part of the Golden Testaments. We have barely laid eyes on them. In one case, a critical piece of the puzzle was stolen from us, because I was stabbed to distract our party and enable the thieves to escape with it.
“In another, we were kidnapped and our niece was compelled to buy our freedom by divulging the location where we thought a set of tablets had been hidden. Multiple, exhaustive searches of dive sites near the ancient site of Ugarit, which are a matter of public record, turned up not a single tablet. When we received information that another set of tablets might be located in Pakistan, we went there, only to have our hotel attacked by masked, armed men.
“My wife and I fled with our traveling companions to the Caves of Gondrani, never setting foot in our intended destinations of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro. Our refuge was bombed and our niece and one of our assistants were nearly killed by people who thought we had uncovered something. They destroyed a priceless ancient site, but with, happily, only empty chambers.
“Even here in Mexico, we were deceived and led on a false trail that ended with another assistant suffering a terrible injury. Our niece’s health and safety and the security of our whole mission was compromised at that time.
“Most recently, our niece’s husband suffered a crippling accident in the site that was our last hope for finding tablets we had hunted for around the world. His invaluable expertise as our scientific consultant was nearly lost to us. Once again, however, this young man’s fleeting glimpse of what he thought were golden tablets behind a waterfall … no such thing existed anywhere near where he lay pinned by tons of brick and dirt.
“Miraculously, he survived and fully recovered from that ordeal, but witness after witness confirmed that his vision of a golden discovery close at hand was simply that. A vision in a time when his very life slipped away from him. No tablets were found anywhere near his broken body – anywhere any human eye from that vantage point could possibly have seen them.”
Naddy fell silent amid sympathetic and disappointed murmurs from the crowd.
“But we press on,” Sophie said. “We seek new leads, new possibilities, and we will not be defeated. So it goes with the pursuit of ancient things – priceless things – we can never rest until we succeed in finding and sharing what the world must have. Never, never will we give up.”
This time almost every person in the room rose with no prompting and clapped uproariously. Naddy and Sophie nodded and stepped away from the dais. Dr. Williams stopped them and gave each of them one of the small boxes. Afterwards she stood there, looking out over the room, seemingly at a loss about how to proceed. As Naddy and Sophie returned to their seats, Keith saw Jenny Kaine bolt from the hall, leaving her cameraman bewildered. Carol Sheldon stood up and ran out as well. Dr. Williams looked even more indecisive. Someone approached and whispered but she remained standing like a statue, until she pushed the man violently aside and departed the room through a stage door.
“Well,” the man said with a nervous chuckle, again wringing a shriek from the PA system as he pulled the mic toward him, “I suppose we can continue to the part of the program everyone has most anticipated. It’s time to announce the regular awards for outstanding school administrators. Please rise and come up to the dais as I read your name.”
“Something very serious is afoot,” Naddy said. “I believe it is time for us to depart.”
“I agree,” Grandmother Bradley said. “Keith, get you father and the others to follow us. We must get the children to safety, too.”
Keith jumped up and zig-zagged across the room toward his father’s table. “Time to go,” he said.
“I couldn’t agree more,” his father replied. Everyone at his table bolted after them. Drew and his people hustled the students and chaperones toward the doors. They ignored the impromptu moderator’s nervous demands that they sit down.
“We’re very sorry,” a gala staff member called out as Keith and the others headed around the circular hallway toward the elevators. “Elevators don’t seem to be working. We’ve called maintenance, but if you’ll all just go back inside the ballroom and have a seat, everything will be fine.”
“Fire!” someone behind them screamed. “The ballroom is on fire!”
“Thanks for the advice,” Drew said, shoving the man out of the way, “but it looks like we got out just in time.”
“Please, everyone, stay calm!” several people with gala badges shouted, pushing back against the surging crowd. “That could be a false alarm. Stay right here.”
“Not happening,” Keith said. Drew’s people drew their weapons and the staffers backed off immediately. “Stairs, Drew. Get everybody headed toward the stairs.”
“Long way down,” Drew grunted.
“Just be glad we’re not going up,” Keith said. “We should split up. I remember when we were going over the security arrangements, that there were stairwells at all four compass points. Divide your people up to cover each group.”
“How are we going to get your grandmother down?” Drew demanded.
Keith stopped dead. “David still on the roof?”
“Yeah. I alerted him to the fire danger, but I’ll radio him you’re on your way up. I’ll feel better knowing you’re out of this anyway.”
“Remember what I said to you a couple of lifetimes ago,” Keith said, meeting Drew’s gaze. “Everybody gets protected. Nobody’s expendable.”
“I remember,” Drew said. “David’s sending a couple of guys down to cover you. And you remember my wife is onboard that copter to help, too.”
“See you at the ball court.”
“God willing and the creek don’t rise.” Drew shook hands with him.
Keith and his grandmother found the emergency staircase to the roof. He lifted her up off the power chair into his arms.
“I’m too heavy.” She had been saying that since they left Drew.
“Remember, I’m the Miracle Man, Grandma,” Keith grunted as he started up the steps. “It’s only two flights. We’ll make it.”
“Alto!” a man’s voice said below him. Keith didn’t stop or look back. A shot r
ang out. He turned the corner and saw a grizzled Mexican man aiming a pistol up at them.
“Papa, no! You cannot hurt these people!” Angel pushed past Keith from above, wearing one of Drew’s security uniforms, and threw a baton at the man. Another of Drew’s men fired a shot downward.
The man below cursed as a thump sounded, the baton clattered against the stairs, and another shot rang out. Keith grunted as fire ripped through his thigh but he forced himself to keep climbing as Angel and the other man got between him and the gunman.
“Alto, Papa!” Angel screamed.
“Angelito mio,” the man said. Keith caught sight of the Mexican hesitating as he negotiated another twist. Keith could smell eucalyptus and feel his grandmother’s heartbeat. Her prayers whispered against his ear.
“You betrayed me, Angelito!” the Mexican hissed. “You told them everything about my organization!”
“That’s a lie, Papa!” Angel said.
Keith staggered upward. He almost slipped in his own blood.
“They never cared about the cartel, Papa! Never feared it. They are protected by Jesucristo! This man is stronger than uno santo! You cannot fight him!”
“Angel, come on,” Keith gasped as he leaned against the roof door. “We can get you out of here!”
The other guard helped him through while keeping his gun pointed down the stairwell.
When Keith pushed out onto the roof, David pulled Grandmother Bradley out of his arms. “Hurry. Drew says everyone is headed down the stairs and so far no pursuit. But that whole floor of the hotel is fully involved in flames.”
“Help Angel,” Keith said. “His father’s down there. Angel got between us.”
“You’re bleeding!” David said.
“His father shot at us,” Keith said. “Help Angel.”
A scream echoed in the stairwell, only slightly muffled by the door, but it was impossible to identify the source. More shots rang out, and one struck the back of the door. David hustled them toward the helicopter.
The Great Thirst Boxed Set Page 68