“Still no answer?” cried Lopez, speeding down the highway, praying no police were along their path.
“No,” said Houston, her voice barely audible over the sounds of the engine and the roadway speeding underneath.
She was weakening. The blood loss had slowed but had not stopped. She needs a doctor. Every minute that went by was a trial by fire for Lopez, every exit a temptation to turn the car around and head to the nearest emergency room. If it were not for her own powerful will, her absolute desire that they intervene in the coming attempted assassination, Lopez knew that he would have succumbed and let the wraith do whatever he would.
“I tried all the numbers he gave me,” she continued, “even others for his residence, office. Too long on the phone, too many unsecured numbers. The CIA is likely tracking us by now. If the wraith doesn’t get us tonight, they likely will.”
“Messages?”
“You heard the voicemails. Text and emails: left them, too. If he’s out there, if he’s still alive, he’ll get them.”
“If he’s still alive?” Lopez had never considered this possibility.
Houston was seized by another coughing fit. Her entire body heaved, her face turned red. It was terrible to see and hear. The fit drained her significantly, and she rested a full minute before responding. “After seeing Farnell,” she gasped out, her voice rough, “I don’t think anything is too low for those guys. They knew about Fred, that’s how they used this Judas against us. Fitting name.” She sighed. “So, they knew he was helping us. The logical step is to remove that help. I hope he’s okay.”
Lopez felt the weight on them increase. Without Simon, they literally had no one in the world to turn to. He pushed that out of his mind for the time being. Compartmentalize.
“It’s up to us anyway, Sara, whatever happened to Fred. He couldn’t get help to us in time. But that raises the question: what do we do when we get there? If the wraith’s not there yet, how do we convince them to listen to us and not throw us in jail, or worse?”
“I don’t know, Francisco. The one thing we have going for us is that the VP is a paranoid motherfucker. We might be able to spook him enough so that, after they throw us to the wolves, he’ll take precautions.”
“And we’re going to risk our lives, our freedom, for the guy some say masterminded all of this? We’ve got to be the world’s dumbest idealists!”
“Coming from you, Francisco, that’s something,” she said, starting to laugh but falling into another protracted coughing fit. She leaned against the window, pressing her face to the glass. “Cold. That feels wonderful. I’m not sure I’ll even make it as far as all that.”
“Sara, then we turn around and let fate take its course with him!”
“No, Francisco! Whatever he might or might not have done, he has rights, to life, liberty, an all that shit. After all this, I need to know that there is something that separates us from them. Courage of our convictions.” Her breathing was ragged. “That’s why we’re going.”
“Okay, shut up then, before you kill yourself talking. I need you.”
Houston smiled and reached for his hand on the wheel. “To help you with the wraith or more generally?”
“Both, damn it! And you know it. Now shut up.”
Her smiled broadened, and she closed her eyes for a time. The roadway blurred in Lopez’s mind, the speed high and reckless, features along the way lost in the motion. Her words reached deeply inside him.
I do need her. This foul-mouthed, highly skilled, intelligent, resourceful, unbelieving, at times brutal woman had become what no one else had been allowed to be in his life: the object of his love.
I love her. The words in his mind flowed over him with energy and warmth. He had finally let himself admit the truth. He knew it must be the crazed and traumatic experiences they had shared, the near-death escapes, the horrors and salvations. But the reasons didn’t change the reality. That he could explain it away with a Psychology 101 model didn’t undo what had happened. He loved her, and he needed her, and nothing was going to change that.
And I don’t want to go back to what was.
The thought struck him like a blow, and his hands grabbed the steering wheel tightly. He had never once since his ordination considered breaking his vows, leaving the Church, deserting his position. He simply could not have done it. Now, in one moment of clarity, he knew that he could. That he had been stripped of all position, been dishonored unjustly, and been rejected in his greatest moment of need by the Church did not assuage his pain at this truth. God had left Christ alone at the hour of his Passion: Eli Eli lama sabachthani? His current sufferings were nothing in comparison! Where is your faith, Francisco?
But what should be and what was were two different things. As Houston slept and the dark evening flashed by incomprehensibly alongside his racing vehicle, the new world he had entered, been forced into, crystallized before Francisco Lopez. Suddenly, he understood that his former life was over. Born from its ashes a new life would begin in the next few hours — or it would be tragically cut short.
Whichever way, he was Father Lopez no more.
57
The Secret Service guard at the gate struck a match, the flash partly blinding him in the blackness of the night. He brought the flame to a cigarette pinched between his lips and repositioned himself in the chair. Sucking on the filter, he ensured that the tobacco had caught, then shook the match out. He dropped it to the floor and crushed it beneath his shoe. Suppressing a yawn, he rubbed his eyes.
I’m too damn old to be doing this anymore. Images of Baton Rouge came back to him, and his days on the LSU basketball team. College girls. He’d been a star. After school, military service, and too many decades putting his ass on the line for others, it was time to quit.
His six-foot-eight-inch frame hardly fit in the little hut they had built for the gate guards, and his back was stiff from bending. He was tired, and it was another long night at an assignment that seemed too easy to pass up but that had turned out to be a real pain in his ass. First, there was the boredom. Night shift after night shift, in rain, cold, summer heat — for two years he had manned this small gatehouse. He was sick of it and of the growing feeling that he was wasting his life away. Then there was the man he protected. The vice president was insanely demanding, moody, and liable to fire anyone for reasons only his paranoia could justify. He’d seen too many decent agents sent packing, always with the rumors of poor recommendation letters that followed them for years. The guard didn’t want to get fired, but he sure as hell needed to get another assignment.
He took a long drag on the cancer stick, holding the smoke deep in his lungs, and exhaled toward the moonless sky. Even the stars were hidden by a low blanket of clouds. With hardly any streetlights around this isolated property, it was about as dark as ink.
A deep rumbling from an engine focused his attention. Now, that was something new. He turned his gaze up the road, following its path up the small hill that sat in front of the property. Two o’clock in the morning didn’t bring too much traffic around these parts. His eyes squinted slightly — the motor sounded powerful, large, likely diesel. A shadow seemed to congeal at the top of the hill, the broad outlines of what almost appeared to be a military-issue truck just discernible in the darkness. It almost looked like an old Humvee. What the hell?