“That’s something, isn’t it?” the older guard said.
“That’s something all right,” Buck said, fearing his voice betrayed him.
The guard at the desk was stacking Buck’s papers. He looked past Buck to the young guard. “Everything all right with the vehicle, Anis?”
Buck had to think quickly. Which would look more suspicious? Not turning to look at the young man, or turning to look at him? He turned to look. Still standing before the closed door, arms over his chest, the rigid young man nodded once. “All is in order. Blankets and supplies.”
Buck had been holding his breath. The man at the desk slid his papers across. “Safe journey,” he said.
Buck nearly wept as he exhaled. “Thank you,” he said.
He turned toward the door, but the older guard was not finished. “Thank you for visiting Israel,” he added.
Buck wanted to scream. He turned around and nodded. “Yeah, uh, yes. You’re welcome.”
He had to will himself to walk. Anis did not move as Buck approached the door. He came face-to-face with the young man and stopped. He sensed the older guard watching. “Excuse me,” Buck said.
“My name is Anis,” the man said.
“Yes, Anis. Thank you. Excuse me, please.”
Finally Anis stepped aside and Buck shakily left. His hands trembled as he folded his papers and stuffed them into his pocket. He boarded the rickety old bus and fired it up. If Tsion had found somewhere to hide, how would Buck find him now? He executed the fragile dance between clutch and accelerator and got the rig moving. Finally up to speed, he shifted into third, and the engine smoothed out a bit. He called out, “If you’re still on board, my friend, stay right where you are until the lights of that border crossing disappear. Then I want to know everything.”
CHAPTER 13
Rayford was tired of being awakened by the phone. However, few people in New Babylon outside of Carpathia and Fortunato ever called him. And they usually had the sense not to disturb him in the middle of the night. So, he decided, the ringing phone was either good news or bad news. One chance out of two, in this day and age, wasn’t bad.
He picked up the phone. “Steele,” he said.
It was Amanda. “Oh, Rayford, I know it’s the middle of the night there, and I’m sorry to wake you. It’s just that we’ve had a little excitement here, and we want to know if you know anything.”
“Know anything about what?”
“Well, Chloe and I were just going over all these pages from Bruce’s computer printout. We told you about that?”
“Yeah.”
“We got the strangest call from Loretta at the church. She said she was just working there alone, taking a few phone calls. She said she just had an overwhelming urge to pray for Buck.”
“For Buck?”
“Yes. She said she was so overcome with the emotion of it that she quickly stood up from her chair. She said she thought that made her lightheaded, but something made her fall to her knees. Once she was kneeling, she realized she wasn’t dizzy but was just praying earnestly for Buck.”
“All I know, hon, is that Buck is in Israel. I think he’s trying to find Tsion Ben-Judah, and you know what’s happened to his family.”
“We know,” Amanda said. “It’s just that Buck has a way of getting himself into trouble.”
“He also has a way of getting himself out of trouble,” Rayford said.
“Then what do you make of this premonition, or whatever it was, of Loretta’s?”
“I wouldn’t call it a premonition. We all could use prayer these days, couldn’t we?”
Amanda sounded annoyed. “Rayford, this was no fluke. You know Loretta is as levelheaded as they come. She was so upset she shut the office and came home.”
“You mean before nine o’clock at night? What has she become, a slacker?”
“Come on, Ray. She didn’t go in until about noon today. You know she often stays till nine. People call at all hours.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“She wants to talk to you.”
“To me?”
“Yes. Will you talk to her?”
“Sure, put her on.” Rayford had no idea what to say to her. Bruce would have had an answer for something like this.
Loretta indeed sounded shaken. “Captain Steele, I’m so sorry ’bout troubling you at this time of the night. What is it, goin’ on like three o’clock over there?”
“Yes ma’am, but it’s all right.”
“No, it’s not all right. There’s no reason to raise you out of a sound sleep. But sir, God told me to pray for that boy, I just know it.”
“Then I’m glad you did.”
“Do you think I’m crazy?”
“I’ve always thought you were crazy, Loretta. That’s why we love you so much.”
“I know you’re sporting with me, Captain Steele, but seriously, have I lost my marbles?”
“No ma’am. God seems to be working in much more direct and dramatic ways all the time. If you were led to pray for Buck right then, you remember to ask him what was happening.”
“That’s just the thing, Mr. Steele. I had this overwhelming sense that Buck was in deep trouble. I just hope he makes it out of there alive. We’re all hoping he can be back here in time for the Sunday service. You’ll be here, won’t you?”
“The Lord willing,” Rayford said, stunned to hear from his own lips a phrase he had always considered silly when Irene’s old friends had used it.
“We want everybody together Sunday,” Loretta said.
“It’s my highest priority, ma’am. And Loretta, would you do me a favor?”
“After gettin’ you up in the middle of the night? You name it.”
“If the Lord prompts you to pray for me, would you do it with all your might?”
“’Course I will. You know that. I hope you’re not just bein’ funny now.”
“I’ve never been more serious.”
When the lights of the border crossing disappeared behind him, Buck pulled the bus off the road, shifted into neutral, set the brake, turned sideways in his seat, and sighed heavily. He could barely produce volume in his voice. “Tsion, are you on this bus? Come out now, wherever you are.”
From the back of the bus came an emotion-filled voice. “I am here, Cameron. Praise the Lord God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.”
The rabbi crawled out from under the seats. Buck met him in the aisle and they embraced. “Talk to me,” Buck said.
“I told you the Lord would make a way somehow,” Tsion said. “I don’t know if the young Anis was an angel or a man, but he was sent from God.”
“Anis?”
“Anis. He walked up and down the aisle of the bus, shining his flashlight here and there. Then he knelt and shined it under the seats. I looked right into the beam. I was praying that God would blind his eyes. But God did not blind him. He came back to where I was and dropped to his elbows and knees. He kept the flashlight in my face with one hand and reached with the other to grab me by the shirt. He pulled me close to him. I thought my heart would burst. I imagined myself dragged into the building, a trophy for a young officer.
“He whispered hoarsely to me through clenched teeth in Hebrew, ‘You had better be who I think you are, or you are a dead man.’ What could I do? There was no more hiding. No more future in pretending I wasn’t here. I said to him, ‘Young man, my name is Tsion Ben-Judah.’
“Still holding my shirt in his fist and with his flashlight blinding me, he said, ‘Rabbi Ben-Judah, my name is Anis. Pray as you have never prayed before that my report will be believed. And now may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face shine upon you and give you peace.’ Cameron, as God is my witness, the young man stood and walked out of the bus. I have been lying here, praising God with my tears ever since.”
There was nothing more to say. Tsion slumped into a seat in the middle of the bus. Buck returned to the wheel and drove off to the border crossing
in Egypt.
Half an hour later Buck and Tsion pulled up to the entrance into the Sinai. This time, God merely used the carelessness of the system to allow Ben-Judah to slip through. The only crossing gate was on the other side of the border into the Sinai. When Buck was told to stop, one guard immediately boarded and began barking orders in his own tongue. Buck said, “English?”
“English it is, gentlemen.” He looked back at Tsion. “You’ll be able to go back to sleep in a few minutes there, old-timer,” he said. “You’ve got to come in and be processed first. I’ll search your bus while you’re in there, and you’ll be on your way.”
Buck, emboldened by the most recent miracle, looked at Tsion and shrugged. He waited as Tsion made way for the guard to get past him and begin the search, but Tsion motioned to Buck that he should get going. Buck hurried off the bus and into the building. As his papers were being processed, the guard said, “No trouble at the Israeli checkpoint then?”
Buck nearly smiled. No problem? There’s no problem when God is on your side. “No, sir.”
Buck couldn’t help himself. He kept looking over his shoulder for Tsion. Where had he gone now? Had God made him invisible?
This was a much easier and quicker process. Apparently the Egyptians were used to simply rubber-stamping whatever the Israelis had approved. You couldn’t get to this checkpoint without going through the previous, so unless the Israelis were trying to dump their castoffs, it was usually smooth sailing. Buck’s papers were stamped and stacked and handed back to him with just a few questions. “Less than a hundred kilometers to Al Arish,” the guard said. “No commercial flights scheduled out of there at this time, of course.”
“I know,” Buck said. “I have made my own arrangements.”
“Very good then, Mr. Katz. All the best.”
All the best is right! Buck thought.
He turned to hurry out to the bus. There was no sign of Tsion. The original guard was still on the bus. As Buck began to board, Tsion came from behind the bus and stepped in front of him. They boarded together. The guard was going through Buck’s bag. “Impressive equipment, Mr. Katz.”
“Thanks.”
Tsion casually moved past the guard and went back to where he had been sitting when they arrived. He stretched out on the seat.
“And you work for whom?” the guard asked.
“International Harvesters,” Buck said. Tsion rose up briefly in his seat, and Buck nearly laughed. Surely Tsion appreciated that.
The guard closed the bag. “You’re both all processed then and ready to proceed?”
“All set,” Buck said.
The guard looked toward the back. Tsion was snoring. The guard turned toward Buck and spoke quietly, “Carry on.”
Buck tried not to be too eager to drive off, but he popped the clutch when the guard was clear of the front of the bus, and soon he was out onto the road again. “All right, Tsion, where were you that time?”
Tsion sat up. “Did you like my snore?”
Buck laughed. “Very impressive. Where were you when the guard thought you were being processed with me?”
“Merely standing behind the bus. You got off and went one way, I got off and went the other.”
“You’re joking.”
“I did not know what to do, Cameron. He was so friendly, and he had seen me. I certainly wasn’t going to walk into the processing center with no papers. When you returned, I figured I had been gone an appropriate time.”
“The question now,” Buck said, “is how long before that guard mentions he saw two men on the bus.”
Tsion carefully made his way up to the seat behind Buck. “Yes,” he said. “First he will have to convince them that he was not seeing things. Maybe it will not come up. But if it does, they will soon give chase.”
“I trust the Lord to deliver us, because he has promised he will,” Buck said. “But I also think we had better be as prepared as possible.” He pulled off to the side of the road. He topped off the water in the radiator and dumped nearly two liters of oil into the engine. He filled the gas tanks.
“It is like we are living in the New Testament,” Tsion said.
Buck, clutching and shifting, said “They might be able to overtake this old bus. But if we can make it to Al Arish, we’ll be on that Learjet and out over the Mediterranean before they know we’re gone.”
For the next two hours, the road grew worse. The temperature rose. Buck kept an eye on the rearview mirror and noticed that Tsion kept looking back as well. Occasionally a smaller, faster car would appear on the horizon and fly past them.
“What are we worried about, Cameron? God would not bring us so far only to have us captured. Would he?”
“You’re asking me? I never had anything like this happen to me until I ran into you!”
They rode in silence for half an hour. Finally, Tsion spoke, and Buck thought he sounded as strong as he had since Buck first saw him in the hideout. “Cameron, you know I have had to force myself to eat up until now, and I have not done a good job at it.”
“So eat something! There’s lots of stuff in here!”
“I believe I will. The pain in my heart is so deep that I feel as if I will never do anything again only for the sake of my own enjoyment. I used to love to eat. Even before I knew Christ, I knew that food was God’s provision for us. He wanted us to enjoy it. I am hungry now, but I will eat only for sustenance and energy.”
“You don’t have to explain it to me, Tsion. I only pray that sometime between now and the Glorious Appearing, you’ll get some relief from the deep wound you must feel.”
“You want anything?”
Buck shook his head, then thought better of it. “Anything there with lots of fiber and natural sugar?” He didn’t know what was ahead, but he didn’t want to be physically weak, regardless.
Tsion snorted. “High in fiber and natural sugars? This is food from Israel, Cameron. You just described everything we eat.”
The rabbi tossed Buck several fig bars that reminded him of granola and fruit. Buck had not realized his own level of hunger until he began to eat. He suddenly felt supercharged and hoped Tsion felt the same. Especially when he saw flashing yellow lights on the horizon far behind them.
The question now was whether to try to outrun the official vehicle or to feign innocence and merely let it pass. Perhaps it was not after them anyway. Buck shook his head. What was he thinking? Of course this was probably their Waterloo. He was confident God would bring them through, but he also didn’t want to be naive enough to think an emergency vehicle would be coming at them from the border crossing without Buck and Tsion in its sights. “Tsion, you’d better secure everything and get out of sight.”
Tsion leaned to stare out the back. “More excitement,” he muttered. “Lord, have we not had enough for one day? Cameron, I will put most of it away, but I am taking a few morsels with me to my bed.”
“Suit yourself. From the looks of those cars at the border, they’re small and have very little power. If I step on it, it will take them a long time to catch us.”
“And when they do?” Tsion said, from beneath the seats in the back.
“I am trying to think of a strategy now.”
“I will be praying,” Tsion said.
Buck nearly laughed. “Your praying has resulted in a lot of mayhem tonight,” he said.
There was no response from the back. Buck pushed the bus for all it was worth. He got it up to over eighty kilometers an hour, which he guessed was in the fifty mile-an-hour range. It rattled and shook and bounced, and the various metal parts squeaked in protest. He knew that if he could see the border patrol car, its driver could see him. There was no sense cutting the lights and hoping they assumed he had pulled off the road.
It seemed he might be pulling away from them. He could not judge distances well in the darkness, but they didn’t appear to be coming at high speed. The lights were flashing, and he was convinced they were after him, but he pushed ahead.
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From the back: “Cameron, I think I have the right to know. What is your plan? What will you do when they overtake us, as they surely will?”
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing, I’m not going back to that border. I’m not even sure I’ll let them pull me over.”
“How will you know what they want?”
“If it’s the man who searched the bus, we’ll know what they want, won’t we?”
“I suppose we will.”
“I will holler at him from the window and urge him to deal with us at the airport. There’s no sense driving all the way back to the border.”
“But will that not be his decision?”
“I guess I’ll have to engage in civil disobedience then,” Buck said.
“But what if he forces you off the road? Makes you pull over?”
“I’ll try to avoid hitting him at all costs, but I will not stop, and if I am forced to stop, I will not turn around.”
“I appreciate your resolve, Cameron. I will pray, and you do as God leads you.”
“You know I will.”
Buck guessed they were thirty kilometers from the airport outside Al Arish. If he could even keep the bus close to sixty kilometers per hour, they could make it in half an hour. The border patrol car would surely overtake them before that. But they were so much closer to the airport than to the border, he was certain the officer would see the wisdom of following them to the airport rather than leading them back to the border.
“Tsion, I need your help.”
“Anything.”
“Stay down and out of sight, but find my phone in my bag and get it to me.”
When Tsion crawled next to Buck with his phone, Buck asked him, “Sir, how old are you?”
“That is considered an impolite question in my culture,” Tsion said.
“Yeah, like I care about that now.”
“I’m forty-six, Cameron. Why do you ask?”
“You seem in pretty good shape.”
“Thank you. I work out.”
“You do? Really?”
“Does that surprise you? You would be surprised at the number of scholars who work out. Of course there are many who do not, but—”