“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?” Bennett 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.
49
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.