Dead Heat

  it meant to be Jewish. I finally decided to be an atheist, or at least an agnostic. I didn't know what I believed. I just knew I couldn't be a Muslim and I had no idea what it meant to be a Jew. But I did have a cousin in Nairobi. He was ten years older than me, but he was always very nice to me when I was growing up. He left for university when I eight, but he came back in the summers to visit, and he'd take me swimming and rock climbing and what have you. He even taught me to drive one summer. So I called him. I begged him to let me

  come live with him, and he finally relented."

  "Was he a Muslim, or at least pretending to be one?" Bennett asked.

  "No, no," Dr. Kwamee said. "Well, I assumed so. I'd never thought to ask. But when I got there, I found that he had become a follower of Jesus."

  12:09 P.M.-ROUTE 15, ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF AMMAN

  Bennett hadn't seen that one coming.

  "How'd you feel about that?" he asked.

  "Honestly, Mr. Bennett, I didn't understand it at all, and at that age, I wasn't much interested. I just needed a stable, safe place to live. My cousin was an emergency room physician at a large hospital in Nairobi. He wasn't making a lot of money—not by

  American or Israeli standards, of course—but he told me if I got good grades, he would help me pay for college. I'd never been real focused in high school. But I was so grateful, I studied harder than I'd ever imagined. I wanted to make my cousin proud."

  "I'm sure he's very proud of you," Bennett said. "Is he still in Nairobi?"

  "No, sir."

  "Where is he now?"

  Kwamee didn't answer for several minutes. The tension in the vehicle was suddenly

  palpable. Bennett was sorry he had asked. But after a while, Kwamee said at last, "He died in the firestorm."

  Bennett listened in silence.

  "He'd gone back to Ethiopia last summer for a few months to help start an orphanage for children whose parents had died of AIDS. I got an e-mail from him in October. He said he felt something terrible was about to happen. He wanted to stay and help. And then . . ."

  A flash of lightning lit up the car. Thunder boomed directly overhead.

  "It was the last I ever heard from him. I cabled the Mossad station chief in Addis Ababa, asked him to check on my cousin. It took a few months, but I finally got

  confirmation recently that he didn't make it."

  "I'm so sorry, Dr. Kwamee," Bennett said.

  They drove in silence for another few minutes. Bennett took another sip of water and

  watched the driving rain pelt the windshield in front of him as he tried to process this man's story. And then, almost before he realized what he was doing, he asked, "Dr.

  Kwamee?"

  "Yes, sir, Mr. Bennett."

  "May I ask you a question?"

  "Of course, please."

  Bennett hesitated. He knew it was a very personal question. But the man was baring

  his soul. He clearly wanted to talk. And how much time did they have left anyhow?

  "Are you really convinced there is no God?"

  Dr. Kwamee cleared his throat and said, "I didn't think so. Not after my parents died.

  How could there be?"

  There was another long pause.

  "And now?" Bennett asked.

  Dr. Kwamee didn't turn to look at him. He kept his eyes fixed on the road and swallowed hard. "After the Day of Devastation, you mean?"

  "Yes," Bennett said.

  "It is very difficult," Kwamee confessed.

  "Why is that?" Bennett asked.

  "Because I don't want to believe in God," the man replied. "I am very angry with Him."

  "Because of your parents."

  "Because of my parents. Because of my brothers. My cousin. My whole family. There has been so much death, so much killing, so much sadness. It makes no sense. If God is love and joy and peace and happiness, why am I not experiencing any of it? And yet, what am I supposed to do now?"

  "What do you mean?" Bennett asked.

  "I mean, I felt the earthquake. I saw the hailstorm. I saw the fire fall from heaven. I saw it with my own eyes. I saw what it hit, and what it didn't."

  "And?"

  "And it's very clear to me now that there is a God," Kwamee said, staring straight ahead at the road as more lightning flashed and more rain fell. "It's clear to everyone, isn't it? And He is not the god of the Koran. He is not the god of the Buddhists or the Hindus. He is most definitely the God of the Bible. Now it's not a matter of whether I believe He exists. I do."

  "Then what is it a matter of?"

  "It's a matter of whether I want to be His follower."

  "What holds you back?"

  "Fear."

  "Fear?" Bennett asked, not sure if he had heard correctly.

  "Yes," Dr. Kwamee said.

  "Of what?" Bennett asked.

  "Fear that Jesus—Yeshua—might actually be the Messiah."

  "Why does that frighten you?"

  Kwamee said nothing.

  "It's okay," Bennett assured him. "You can be honest with me."

  Kwamee seemed to think about that for a moment, and then said, quite bluntly, "The truth is, Mr. Bennett, I don't want to believe."

  That was honest, Bennett thought—dangerous, but honest. "Why not?" he asked.

  Kwamee shrugged. "It's many things. Partly, I just don't want to change who I am, you know? Following Jesus means giving up a lot of stuff... stuff I like . . . stuff I don't like to be told not to do; you know what I mean?"

  Bennett nodded. He knew all too well.

  "And . . ."

  "And what?" Bennett asked, even more curious now.

  "I don't know," Kwamee conceded. "Believing in Jesus feels like . . ."

  "Like what?" Bennett pressed.

  "Like . . . betrayal."

  "Betrayal?"

  "Yes," Kwamee confessed. "It's like betraying my people, my country. I mean, I know all the facts. Jesus was Jewish. His disciples were Jewish. The apostle Paul was a rabbi—a

  Pharisee, for crying out loud—before his experience on the road to Damascus. As best I can tell from reading the New Testament, almost all of Jesus' early followers were Jewish, but . . ."

  "But what?"

  "But that was two thousand years ago—before the Romans burned down Jerusalem and

  destroyed the Temple, before the Crusades, before the Inquisition, before the Holocaust."

  "None of that was the fault of Jesus," Bennett said. "Jesus said, 'Love your neighbor. . . .

  Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

  "But, Mr. Bennett, please—you can't deny an awful lot of terrible things were done in the name of Jesus," Kwamee insisted.

  "But Dr. Kwamee, none of those horrible things were done by people who were truly

  following Jesus," Bennett replied. "They were done by people who were denying everything He taught, everything He modeled, everything He stood for. Look, I don't deny horrible things have happened to the Jews, and a great deal of it by those who said they were Christians.

  But were they really Christians? How could they have been true followers of the Jewish

  Messiah and done such horrible things to the Jews? And why would Jesus—who you rightly

  noted was a Jew—why would He have set into motion a movement to do such horrible

  things to Jews? He wouldn't have. He didn't.

  "The truth is," Bennett continued, "the more people love Jesus, the more they're going to love the Jewish people and want to bless them. And look what's happening all around

  us: more Jews are coming to faith in Yeshua, in Jesus, as the Messiah today than at any other time in human history. Millions of Jews around the world. Upward of a million Israelis—

  maybe more—just in the last eight months. They're not betraying their Jewishness.

  They're discovering it in a whole new way."

  "I know; I know," Kwamee said, shaking his head.

  "So what's the problem?" Bennet
t asked. "The time is now, my friend. Jesus is coming back, and soon. There's not a lot of time to decide, and believe me, you don't want to be here when the Antichrist arises and the four horsemen of the apocalypse are unleashed.

  You really don't."

  "But I can't, Mr. Bennett. I just can't."

  "Can't?" Bennett asked. "Or won't?"

  "Is there a difference?" Kwamee asked.

  Bennett couldn't believe the question. But before he could answer, a gunshot rang out.

  The windshield in front of them shattered. Dr. Kwamee slumped forward, his foot still on the gas. The ambulance accelerated rapidly. It glanced off a guardrail, then swerved into

  oncoming traffic.

  Bennett's heart froze. His eyes went wide. An oil tanker was bearing down on them,

  and they were heading straight into it.

  12:21 P.M.-ROUTE 15, ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF AMMAN

  Bennett instinctively grabbed the wheel and pulled it right.

  Again the ambulance swerved violently, hydroplaning on the slick pavement.

  Bennett heard the shrill blast of the tanker's horn. He could see the giant rig fishtailing, but there was nothing more he could do. He couldn't reach the brake. He didn't have a free hand to pull Dr. Kwamee away from the wheel, and the gap between the two vehicles was

  narrowing fast.

  Bennett heard another blast of the horn. The oil tanker rushed by, barely missing

  them, but before he could catch his breath, he realized they weren't out of danger yet. They were now racing for an embankment and about to go plunging over the edge.

  Bennett knew he had only seconds to react. He had to hit the brakes and slow this

  thing down or they were going to hit the guardrail with full force and they were all going to die. But he couldn't do it. He wanted to. Desperately. But he couldn't reach. He was pinned by his seat belt, and there was no time to hit the release, slide over, shove the doctor's lifeless body out of the way, and reach the brakes before it was too late.

  He could hear the nurses in the back screaming but heard nothing from Erin. Was

  she conscious? Was she alive? He had to do something. He couldn't lose her. He lunged

  for the emergency brake, pulled it hard, threw the gearshift into park, and prayed for a miracle. He knew the risks.

  But they didn't really matter. There was no other choice. He took his chances and

  hoped they could live with the consequences.

  The wheels suddenly locked—the front ones anyway. Black smoke poured from the

  squealing tires. The ambulance began to spin out, but at the velocity it was traveling, it didn't stop. It couldn't. Instead, it lurched forward and flipped over not once but twice.

  Bennett was thrown hard against his seat belt, then back against the seat and then forward again.

  Broken glass and razor-sharp pieces of metal were flying everywhere. The screaming

  in the back was gone now, replaced by the deafening roar of crunching metal. The

  ambulance skidded across the pavement. It slammed into the guardrail, spun nearly 180

  degrees, and rocked back and forth—teetering on the edge but stopping just short of

  plunging into the abyss.

  Unfortunately, they had come to a standstill upside-down and in the wrong lane. The

  entire vehicle was soon engulfed in flames. The cab was rapidly filling with smoke. Bennett's

  eyes stung. His mouth was filled with blood. He had to get out. He had to get Erin and the nurses out. The whole thing could blow in a matter of seconds, but he could barely move.

  Searing pains shot through his right leg. He couldn't feel his left leg at all. Panic was overtaking him.

  And then, as he looked through the gaping hole that had been the windshield, he saw a

  cement truck heading straight for them.

  It was at most a few hundred yards away and coming fast. The driver laid on the horn.

  Bennett could see the truck's brakes lock. He could see the smoke. He could hear the

  squealing tires. But the truck wasn't turning. It wasn't fishtailing. It was still coming straight at him.

  Despite the intense pain—now in his arms as well as his legs—Bennett felt a sudden rush of adrenaline course through his body. As if an external force was grabbing him and forcing him through the motions, he found himself up on his knees, diving through the front

  windshield, and rolling through broken glass to escape the oncoming truck. He was just in time. A millisecond later, he felt the rush of wind blow past his face and watched in horror as the cement truck careened into the ambulance and smashed through the guardrail, and both disappeared over the edge.

  Bennett gasped. An instant later, he heard the crash of glass and steel. He knew it was the ambulance hitting the ground first. He heard the second crash, the cement truck

  coming down on top of it. Oblivious to his own injuries, he jumped up and raced toward

  the edge of the embankment. As he did, he heard the first explosion. He saw the second

  and felt the fireball erupting from the valley below.

  "No!" he screamed with a cry of desperation that echoed through the valley.

  His heart pounding, his mind racing, he scrambled down the embankment and rushed

  into the flaming wreckage. This couldn't be happening. God wouldn't let it.

  "Erin!" he screamed. "Erin!"

  He kept shouting her name. Again and again he called her name, that name he

  loved so dearly, the name that had captured his heart from the first time he'd ever heard it, though he'd never dreamed at the time she could be his. But amid the fire and the

  smoke, he suddenly realized he was calling in vain. She wasn't answering. He couldn't

  even find the ambulance, only the roaring remains of the cement truck.

  He was sobbing now—sobbing and coughing and circling the truck, weaving through

  the flames, trying to find an access point to the ambulance. But there was none. It was gone, crushed, yet Bennett refused to believe it. The sobs deepened. He doubled over,

  heaving, gasping for air, but in the process he was sucking in huge amounts of smoke.

  The more he searched, the more he wept, but the more he wept, the more he choked on the acrid smoke and noxious fumes around him. He gagged and began throwing up. Again and

  again he vomited until there was nothing left. But the vomiting didn't stop.

  As if the poison of death itself had entered his system and his body Was trying to

  force it out, the innermost parts of his being convulsed again and again. Such dry heaves, however, only forced more smoke and fumes into his lungs and he began to panic all the

  more. He was suffocating— emotionally, physically—but he wouldn't leave the wreckage.

  He couldn't, not without the woman he loved.

  His skin was blistering from the intense heat. His feet were shredded by glass and

  shrapnel. And then he heard what sounded like automatic gunfire. It didn't make sense. But even if it was, so what? He wasn't going anywhere without her. He wasn't going anywhere

  without his Erin.

  Bennett stumbled about in the acrid fog, circling the blazing wreckage, still calling

  Erin's name, distantly cognizant of the danger to his own life but disinterested in his own fate just the same. He refused to believe she was dead. It was all a mistake—a nightmare perhaps, a wicked hallucination—but it certainly wasn't true. He would find her. He had to. He would find her, and he would rescue her, and he would take her to a safe place, a place where he could nurse her back to health, a place where no one could find them—not the president, not his staff, not Doron, not this mystery caller or the monsters for whom he worked.

  But suddenly he heard another burst of automatic gunfire and felt a sharp blow to the

  back of his head. His knees buckled. He hit the ground hard. The force of the impact

  knocked
the wind out of him. He struggled to breathe. He struggled to get up. He was

  choking. He was gagging again. Someone hog-tied his hands and feet, stuffed a bandanna

  in his mouth, and forced a hood over his head.

  Bennett couldn't breathe, couldn't think. He was slipping into shock, about to black out, and then he heard the sound of footsteps. Many footsteps, running hard and approaching fast.

  He heard the pump action of several shotguns and of magazines being ejected and

  replaced in automatic assault weapons and sidearms as well. The Mossad team was getting mowed down, he realized. He heard voices, shouting something he couldn't understand; then he felt a boot in his groin and everything went black.

  2:23 P.M.-BABLYON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

  "Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please?"

  Claire Devreaux, Salvador Lucente's press secretary, cleared her throat and waited

  for the commotion to settle down. She looked out at the bank of at least fifty or sixty television cameras, several dozen photographers, and several dozen reporters and

  network news producers from around the globe. The press pool seemed to be growing

  week by week. Coverage of the U.N. secretary-general was approaching that of the

  American president, and the logistics of handling such a massive international media

  operation were becoming overwhelming to their small staff, she realized. They had to

  hire some more experienced hands, and they had to do it fast.

  A junior aide signaled Devreaux that everyone was now in place. Several networks,

  including BBC and CNN, were carrying the press conference live. It was time.

  "Very well," Devreaux continued, "thank you for assembling on such short notice. The secretary-general is going to make a brief statement and then take a few questions. I need to inform you, however, that we will not be flying to Brussels as planned. Rather, I have just been informed that we are returning to Beijing for emergency talks. What's more, the secretary-general has a phone call scheduled with U.S. president Oaks exactly one hour

  from now. So we need to make this fast, get everyone