He pulled to the side of the road in the middle of nowhere Virginia, the GPS coordinates agreed upon in advance. A large vehicle awaited him, and a shadowed form stood beside it. He shut the truck down and exited, approaching the solid shape rapidly.
“You are rushing this,” said the shadow. “Even with all I bring you, you need more time to prepare such an assault.”
“There is no more time. I have explained it.”
“Yes, in war, there is never enough time.”
He approached the customized military-grade Humvee. The truck was army surplus, retrofitted with inch-thick steel armor plating, including a set of plates across the windshield that practically turned the vehicle into a light tank. The roof opened for engagement with large weaponry, and he came equipped.
The wraith surveyed the bounty before him. “You managed to avoid having it all confiscated.”
The soldier grunted. “On the backroads of this country, there are many who are not suspicious of such things. There is a great fear and discontent in this nation. They build bunkers and hoard ammunition. They came to speak with me, at gas stations and along the road. When they learn I am a Jew, it confirms their prophecies. The Christians: either they put us on a pedestal, or they gas us off them! One fool asked if I believed that the End Times were coming.”
“And what did you say?” asked the wraith, pulling the crates onto the road and opening them with a crowbar.
He waved an arm. “I told him they were already here — for ten thousand years!” He laughed heartily. “Civilization has the memory of a pickled alcoholic. All these wars, these empires: the Chinese, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, British, Americans. Always noise and anger, purpose, mad pursuit. And where are they now? What has become of their greatness? For what purpose?”
He reached down to the dirt road and scraped his thick fingernails into the ground, digging up a handful of rocks and dust. He raised his fist and stuck it in the face of the wraith, his palm squeezing tightly as the grains spilled back to the earth.
“For nothing, Javed. For ruins and dust. Foggy myths erased in time.” The soldier turned sharply and hoisted a squat, cylindrical device from a crate. He presented it to the wraith. “Your contacts are very impressive. A Predator missile launcher. I suppose with enough money the black market dealers in Dubai will oblige nearly anything. And the Sinaloa Cartel has the right tunnels through the borders. How great is this global economy?” He laughed, tossing the weapon to the wraith, who placed it in the Humvee. “They even found some warheads for this old model. There will be fireworks tonight.”
The wraith opened several more crates alongside the truck and removed a large machine gun. “This is the Browning?”
The soldier nodded. “M2. As you specified, it’s to be secured with a weapons platform on the roof. Surrounded by welded plates of one inch thick steel. Ha! I don’t think that even the American Secret Service has the rounds to pierce this.” He whistled. “But what this will throw at them is something very different.”
The wraith nodded, and with considerable effort, he managed to mount it on top of the Humvee. The M2 was steel lethality. Fifty-caliber rounds that could even serve in an antiaircraft capacity. Sustained rate of fire of forty rounds per minute, with a maximal, barrel-melting five hundred rounds per minute if needed. After it was secured, he cleaned out the remainder of the crate contents, his supply list topped off with two grenade launchers, a pump-action shotgun, and several handguns.
Despite everything that had happened, his crazed anger of the last few hours, the wraith smiled. The vice president had always feared assassination and had prepared himself. But the wraith had prepared as well, and he knew that chaos would always defeat attempts to preserve order. Or life. He would bring a war to the Maryland mansion the likes of which had never been imagined. It would be an assault that could not possibly be anticipated or prepared for. It would be overwhelming and absurd. And that was why it would work.
“This is where I leave you.” The old man put a hand on the wraith’s shoulder, and stared down the road. He exhaled sharply and set his jaw. “It is time for a revelation. I have lied to you twice, Javed.” The wraith turned to look at the soldier, but said nothing. “Twice you have asked me why I have helped you. Once, many years ago, I said ‘to make superman.’ This was a lie.”
The soldier stepped away and walked forward alone, staring into the black sky. The night was dark, no stars visible under cloud cover. The moon was hidden.
The wraith spoke. “And the second, Avram?”
“When you asked the same question. Why did I come back? I lied and told you because I am an honorable soldier and would not leave a warrior to die alone in such a hopeless quest!” He laughed strangely, the sound staccato.
“Then,why did you help me? Why are you here?”
“Perhaps you will not understand,” he said, sounding unsure. “Thirty years ago, I saw a film about the Hindu prophet, the Mahatma. Such a fool, but a real man. I will take a fool who is real before a wise man who is only shadows.”
“Yes?”
“I have forgotten much of it. But one scene I always remembered. In this scene, the Hindus and Muslims are slaughtering each other once again, and the fool begins to starve himself. He will die unless the people stop killing each other! And then a Hindu man comes, begging the prophet to eat, throwing bread at him. He cries out: ‘I have killed a young Muslim child, smashed his head into the wall! I will go to hell!’ “
The old soldier laughed again, the sound now high-pitched. The wraith simply stared without understanding.
“So, the prophet tells him he knows how to get out of hell. Prophets know such things, apparently. He tells him to find a young Muslim boy, whose parents have been killed, and to adopt him, raise him as his own, but, of course, raise him as a Muslim.”
Time was racing by. The wraith felt a growing impatience. “And how does this explain why you helped me?”
The old man turned toward the wraith. “Because I am that man, Javed. Maybe thousands others are that man.” Pain was etched in his face. “I had been in Israel less than a year. My brigade leveled a building with Palestinian soldiers. But they had used children as shields to stop our attack. Hundreds from a local school. We did not know, or we weren’t told by our commanders. We only knew the truth when we took the block, and the mangled bodies were strewn across the road. Black dust sticky with the blood of innocents. Small bodies everywhere.”
The wraith understood. “And then I came.”
He nodded. “Yes. There you were, a child victim of the horrors of war. An innocent. I remembered this movie. I remembered this scene. It was like God had brought you to me. And I hoped perhaps there was a way out of hell.” He spoke almost to himself, staring down at his hands. “You see, hell is not a thing that comes when we die. What mankind has failed to understand is that we are always there.”
“And have you been freed?”
The old man walked back to his car. “I have done what I could, but tonight your journey will end.”
The wraith set his jaw. “You fear that I will fail.”
The soldier stared long at the wraith and shook his head. “No, Javed, what I fear for you most is that you will succeed.”
56
Lopez drove as fast as he could through the night. In the beginning, Houston had helped with the directions, finding the fastest routes to the Maryland home of the former vice president. They disregarded the back roads, took to the main arteries, casting aside caution. The wraith had a large head start on them, and there was little chance they could catch him. But they had to try.