“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”
For the moment, it was all he could remember.
Bennett felt a tap on his shoulder and suddenly remembered to spread his arms and extend his legs. As he did he glanced at the altimeter on his wrist.
They were falling a thousand feet every six seconds.
They were hurtling through the atmosphere at terminal velocity. But in the pitch-blackness and thick cloud cover with no lights, no night- vision goggles, no geographic reference points to depend upon whatsoever, it was impossible for a novice to have any sense of how long they’d been out of the plane or how far they’d fallen.
He checked his altimeter again.
5,000 feet.
He couldn’t believe how fast the dial was counting down. And it suddenly occurred to him that from the moment he’d quit the White House staff and decided to follow Christ no matter what the cost, his whole life had become a HALO jump. He no longer controlled his life. A strategic optimist and a tactical pessimist, his very survival was now in God’s hands.
4,000 feet.
It had to be time for Claude to pull the chute.
3,000.
2,000.
Twelve seconds to impact.
Bennett tried to scream but no sound emerged. He craned his head to see Claude’s eyes, but the man was literally right on top of him. Bennett tried to get his attention, waving his hands, tapping his watch furiously, anything to indicate the time was up.
1,500 feet.
Nothing.
1,000.
Just six seconds to impact.
Was Claude dead? Had he passed out? It had happened to other jumpers. Mordechai had told him stories, warned him of the risks. But Bennett wasn’t ready to die. Not here. Not like this.
Bennett could see the ground now, hurtling toward his face. He could see the lights of a cottage on the other side of a field. He could see a VW van.
Five seconds… four…
Bennett’s eyes went wide. Sweat poured down his back and legs. He wanted to pray a final prayer but all he could get out was “Jesus.”
A HALO jump. He finally understood what it meant — High Altitude, Low Opening. He just hoped there was an opening.
Then suddenly — without warning — he felt the chute eject. He felt the harness tighten under his armpits and groin.
Claude kicked the back of his legs, and Bennett raised his feet and prepared to land. They hit the soft grass and rolled right.
Not a moment too soon.
51
The world awoke to a Washington Post exclusive.
A senior advisor and close friend to President James T. MacPherson was fired over the weekend after urging the administration to either assassinate Russian leader Yuri Gogolov or launch a preemptive military strike against him, and then threatening to go public with his advice if the president did not immediately comply.
The story was full of lies and mistakes, but it certainly made for good copy.
High-ranking administration aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Post that Jonathan M. Bennett, the architect of and chief negotiator for the president’s Oil-for-Peace plan, may be suffering from “extreme post-traumatic stress disorder” or some other form of stress-induced illness. Bennett was seriously wounded during the recent coup in Moscow. His fiancée, Erin Christina McCoy, a fellow White House official, is missing in Russia and presumed dead.
White House Press Secretary Chuck Murray vigorously denied the story. But given its front-page prominence in the country’s paper of record, and the fact that Bennett was nowhere to be found, the story quickly sparked an international firestorm.
Was the White House considering a preemptive strike against Gogolov’s regime?
Insisting the answer was no, the White House press shop went into damage-control mode while Bob Corsetti quietly demanded that the CIA find Bennett at all costs.
McCoy stared at the lightbulbs above her.
One was now burned out.
How long would the other one last? she wondered. How long would she?
She closed her eyes again. She couldn’t afford to be seen as recovering, much less awake and alert. Every time she began to regain her strength they came for her again and beat her within an inch of her life. And after spending some unknown amount of time in the cold shower, she would pass out again.
She feared for Bennett’s life. Was she being selfish? Should she give in to Jibril’s demands? Her head said yes. She couldn’t bear to think of Bennett suffering as she was. But every time she was about to give in, something inside her said no.
Wait a little longer. Endure a little more. My grace is sufficient.
She clung to her only source of solace, the Scriptures her mother had made her memorize as a young girl, particularly the Twenty-third Psalm. She might not be in green pastures or beside quiet waters, but the Lord had made her lie down. And there was no question in McCoy’s mind that He was restoring her soul.
She could feel the prayers of thousands back home lifting her spirits, giving her strength. How else could she explain the strange sense of peace she felt? She was walking through the valley of the shadow of death, yet she feared no evil. She was mentally and physically exhausted. Yet her spiritual tanks were full, and she was not afraid. How else was that possible without the help of a Messiah who had once suffered far more than she?
They were behind schedule.
But there had been no choice. A ferocious storm was battering the whole of Turkey. It had rained — driving, relentless sheets of rain — nonstop during the hours since Claude had handed Bennett off to Hamid. Bennett hoped Claude had managed to get to his rendezvous point to be picked up. Bennett and Hamid, meanwhile, had been stuck in this cottage for hours, unable to drive on the treacherous roads. Visibility was almost nil. Mud- and rockslides made several key mountain roads virtually impassable. Flash floods were reported throughout the country.
Yet Hamid was now convinced it was time to move.
It was just after 9 p.m. Why the urgency? Bennett wondered. But Hamid was insistent, so the two of them packed the VW bus and wiped down the cottage of fingerprints or any sign they’d been there at all. Fifteen minutes later, they were on the move as lightning flashed around them and thunder crashed across the eastern skies.
Progress was slow, and what they saw over the next ninety minutes terrified them both. A convoy of Russian and Iranian troop transports and flatbed trucks carrying tanks, gasoline trucks, and other military vehicles passed them, heading south, with no end in sight.
As they finally entered the border town of Bazargan and approached the frontier — freshly cleared from mudslides by a bevy of military bulldozers — only three cars stood in line ahead of them at Passport Control.
No one in his right mind would be going into Iran. Not on a night like this.
“Nervous?” Hamid asked, gulping a can of cola as the windshield wipers worked furiously to give them at least a meager view of the road ahead.
“A little, yeah,” Bennett admitted, wiping the perspiration from his hands.
“Here, take this,” Hamid said, pulling a pill from his pocket.