The president told them to finalize their operations, be ready for his call, and make absolutely sure none of their preparations leaked.
“Everything depends on the element of surprise,” he told them. “Everything.”
63
Bennett awoke in a room with no windows.
There was one door. No furniture but a chair to which he was chained. Gray cinder block walls. A filthy white tile floor with a hole at one end that he assumed must be the toilet, though he wouldn’t have been able to reach it if he had needed to. And that was it. No color. Nothing to read. Nothing to watch. And it was brutally hot. Humid, too. The cell was bathed in harsh fluorescent light, and the only sound he heard was the electric hum of the lamps on the ceiling.
He was wearing a green prison jumpsuit. His hair was damp, matted with perspiration. Beads of sweat trickled down his back and neck. He was handcuffed with his arms behind his back, but he could lean a little to the left and a little to the right to wipe the sweat of his eyes and face on the shoulders of the jumpsuit. His feet were shackled to each other and to the large wooden chair, which seemed to be bolted to the floor.
Surveying his own physical condition, he found that his stomach and sides ached, and he suddenly had flashbacks of two men beating him while trying to get him off the plane. His head was pounding. His eyes felt a little swollen. He still felt groggy from whatever drugs they had used to sedate him. But as best he could tell, he had no broken bones and saw no blood on him, or on the floor around him.
Then, just as on the plane, the fog began to lift again. He remembered what had happened. He remembered what had been ripped away from him, and he began to convulse with sobs that forced their way to the surface.
The press corps was in a frenzy.
America had been attacked, but no one knew by what enemy. The military was clearly preparing for another war, but no one knew with whom. Millions of Americans in four major cities lay dead or dying. Tens of millions more were on the move, fleeing the radioactive hot zones but unsure where to go or what to do next. President MacPherson was dead. President Oaks might be injured, they were hearing. He seemed to have been involved in some sort of violent incident inside the world’s most secure military complex. But as of yet there was no central information center, no White House press operation, nor a White House to base it in.
Reporters, editors, and producers kept calling Ginny Harris, who, as the vice president’s press secretary, was the highest known ranking media official in the government. But most of the colleagues she had served with in the Communications Department at the White House were dead. She was overwhelmed by the events of the past few days. And no one was giving her direction on what to tell a pack of media wolves as scared as they were hungry for the latest information.
Chuck Murray was finally given permission to speak to President James via telephone. He gave the new commander in chief an earful.
“This is getting dangerous,” Murray warned. “The United States government has to have a voice. A message. Answers to people’s questions. Otherwise we’re allowing a vacuum. It’s not that we look pathetically disorganized. It’s that we look unable to function.”
“Chuck, I get it,” James said. “But I’ve got more than I can handle at the moment. Press relations isn’t at the top of my to-do list. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re about to launch a war.”
“Mr. President, you can’t launch a war right now,” Murray countered.
“Why not?”
“Because no one knows you’re the president.”
“I’ve been legally sworn in,” James insisted. “It’s legal. It’s all constitutional. You saw on the video feed, didn’t you?”
“You’re not hearing me,” Murray said. “Of course you’re the president. But no one knows it. You need to get out there, explain what happened.”
“I can’t. Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to panic people.”
“Too late,” Murray said. “They’re panicked. And now there’re rumors of a gunfight inside NORAD. People don’t know if the president is alive or dead. They don’t know who’s running the country. And it’s not just Americans who don’t know — North Korea doesn’t know; the Iraqis don’t know; the Chinese don’t know. There’s blood in the water, Mr. President, and if the military guys aren’t telling you, I will — we’re running the risk of drawing another attack because people think the U.S. government really has been decapitated.”
In time, Bennett’s tears slowed.
His breathing calmed. And memories of Erin came drifting back, one by one. He could see her sitting on the steps of the medical clinic back in the camp, surrounded by eight or ten Lebanese and Syrian orphan girls, all sitting in a circle, reading them Bible stories and answering their questions.
He could see her with precious Fareeda, all of nine years old, alone in the world, but always at Erin’s side — hanging on her every word, trailing Erin all over the camp, volunteering to do any errand, however tiny and insignificant. Erin had told Jon that in Arabic Fareeda meant “unique, matchless, precious pearl or gem,” and that’s certainly what this little one had been to Erin — a daughter almost, a name and a face and a heart into whom Erin could pour her boundless love and see it matter, see it register.
Fareeda loved to hear Erin tell her about “Eesah,” Arabic for Jesus. “Tell it again,” she would say when Erin would recount stories of Jesus healing the ten lepers or making the blind see and the lame walk. Had anyone told her that he and Erin had left the camp? Did she know what had happened? He hoped not. Everyone that little girl had ever known had died. Bennett could suddenly hear Erin teaching Fareeda to sing “Jesus Loves Me” in Arabic and English, and that’s when he lost it again, dissolving into a bitter wail that echoed through the halls.
Why? The question haunted him. It refused to let him go. Why had God let it happen? Any of it? Was it really so much to ask that he and Erin be allowed to enjoy a few years together?
And yet, as much as Bennett wanted to be angry, he knew deep down that he was grateful for every minute the Lord had let him spend with Erin. He hadn’t earned her. He hadn’t deserved her. She had been out of his league and he knew it. He’d known it from the moment he’d laid eyes on her.
He hadn’t been able to figure it out at first. It was a mystery that had taken some time to unravel. It wasn’t just that she was the smarter of the two, though that was certainly the case. And it wasn’t just that she was braver than he was, though that was true too. It was that she was better than he was. Not to be self-deprecating, but she genuinely loved people more than he did. She loved Christ more passionately than he did. He was learning, no doubt about it. But he was following her lead, though she never made him feel awkward about it. She never held it over him. That wasn’t her way, and it made him love her all the more.
Every Tuesday night, she’d bring him to visit a widow and her six kids whom she had met on the other side of the camp. Bennett had constantly pleaded with her to take the night off. She was exhausted and so was he. But she wouldn’t listen. She didn’t want to just make meals and feed them to thousands of nameless, faceless refugees, even if she was doing it in the name of Jesus in a U.N. camp without so much as a pastor or any other Christian leaders. She wanted to touch real lives. She wanted to help real people meet Jesus. “How else are they going to see Him,” she would always say, “unless we take Jesus to them?”