Topside, he observed the young partiers from the corner of his eye. Their mood had sobered, and they were watching him, but when he turned his head toward them, they turned away.
Should I kill them before they contact the authorities? It wasn’t a priestly thought, but it was a legitimate SEAL thought, though he felt guilty for thinking it.
He walked swiftly to the van and tried one of Victor’s keys in the door. It opened. Chris hopped in and drove. Stepping harder on the accelerator, he increased the distance between himself and Jim Bob’s and Victor’s corpses.
If I were Hannah, where would I go?
He switched on Victor’s GPS tracker and waited for the main screen to pop up. When his eyes returned from the GPS to the road, he saw the road had curved and he was heading for a ditch. He steered quickly and recovered. He glanced at the GPS again. It displayed a map icon and tracking icon. Touching the tracking icon led him to another screen where he saw an icon labeled SW — Switchblade Whisper. A map highlighted his current location. After touching a green button, a violet arrow showed the road and direction he should take to follow the Switchblade Whisper. It had already traveled northeast into Turkey.
Using the GPS to calculate distance, he figured it would take him sixteen minutes to reach Highway One then fourteen minutes to the border. But he didn’t have a visa for entering Turkey. He’d have to find a way to sneak across. During the first minutes in the dark solitude of the van, he felt sleepy and just wanted to close his eyes for a moment, but he didn’t dare for fear of drifting off.
On the yacht, Jim Bob had spoken in his fatherly tone, telling Chris that his accusations of foul play were crazy. When Chris was little, his father had thought he was crazy. The week after his rescue, he’d been sitting in the living room on the couch reading a book when his father interrupted.
“What are you reading?”
He looked up from his book. “The Three Musketeers.”
“Oh, do you like it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Yes.”
“You remember the psychiatrist who you talked to when you came home?”
“I don’t remember his name.”
“He said that you told him a voice spoke to you, saying you would be rescued, but no one was around.”
Chris nodded. The voice had said, Fear not. On the morrow when the night cometh, you will be saved.
“Sometimes when people become tired and weak like you were in the well, they see things or hear things that aren’t really there. They have hallucinations.”
Why don’t they believe me? He wiggled his fingers anxiously. “It wasn’t a hallucination. It was real.”
“It might have seemed real, but you were tired and weak.”
“I know what I heard.”
“You know what you think you heard,” his father said. “But God doesn’t speak to children like that.”
“He spoke to me!”
“Son, the psychiatrist is worried about you. You can’t tell people things like this because they might think the wrong things about you.”
His mother stepped into the living room. She gave his dad the death stare. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Trying to talk some sense into him,” his father said, his voice agitated. The psychiatrist thinks he has schizophrenia and wants to see him again — run a PET scan and fMRI.”
“He’s not going to medicate my son,” she said. “The psychiatrist isn’t experienced in spiritual matters.”
“I don’t want him to medicate Chris, either.”
“But you’re trying to tell him that what he heard wasn’t real,” his mom pressed.
They were talking about him like he wasn’t even there, and he crossed his arms over his chest.
“Don’t tell me that you believe him, too,” he said.
She raised her voice. “I wasn’t there, okay? But yes, I believe him.”
“Come on. God doesn’t speak to kids.”
“Jesus did. And Chris is a lot closer to Jesus than you or me. We’ve always felt that.”
His father paused for a moment. “Events in the Bible happened a long time ago.”
“Are today’s events so much different?” she asked.
“Well, he can’t go around telling people he heard God, or they’re going to think he’s a lunatic and put him on medication and turn him into a walking vegetable!”
She turned to Chris, ignoring his father’s outburst. Her eyes softened. “Honey, I believe you.”
His parents rarely argued, and while he hated hearing them go at each other, he loved that his mother believed him.
She continued, “You had an experience that was special — like the pearls on a necklace. But some people don’t appreciate how special pearls are. You can only share special things with special people.”
Chris could still hear her voice in his ear and sighed at the memory. He’d felt so alienated when his father had thought him crazy, but his father had questioned Chris’s sanity because he didn’t understand. And Jim Bob had questioned Chris’s sanity because he wanted to shake his conviction that he’d been double-crossed. Chris wondered if he was brain deficient for becoming both a SEAL and a minister, but he held on to his conviction anyway.
He glanced back at the GPS tracking monitor. When he returned his eyes to the road, a man was in the middle of the intersection riding a donkey across Highway One. And he was naked except for his boots and the charred remains of a shirt around his shoulders.
I must really be losing my mind. He blinked. Still there.
It was so surprising he almost forgot to slam on the brakes. The wheels screamed horrifically as they locked up and slid. The naked man lifted his legs, saving himself from being crunched between the vehicle and the animal. The donkey fell over and brayed loudly enough to be heard for kilometers. The man rolled across the little hood, and his white buttocks briefly pressed against the windshield in front of Chris’s face before he slid at an angle and landed in the road.
Both Chris’s engine and the vehicle came to a stop, but the lights were still on in the dark night. The naked man stood with his privates in full view now. His mouth opened wide, and he screamed at Chris, but the donkey brayed so incessantly that Chris couldn’t understand him.
Chris tried to start the engine, but it just stuttered. He tried again. No luck.
The naked man limped over to Chris’s window. The donkey fell silent. “Where in the hell did you get your driver’s license?” the naked man demanded in a New York accent. He was short, bald, and looked like an angry Elmer Fudd. “Walmart?!”
Chris stared at him in disbelief. “Who are you?”
The naked man’s brow furrowed in the middle. “What?”
Chris rolled down the window a couple of inches so they could hear each other better. “Who are you?”
“I’m the guy on the donkey you almost killed,” Elmer Fudd said, indignant. “Who are you?”
Chris tried to start the engine again, but it wouldn’t turn over. “I’m the guy whose engine won’t start,” he said with frustration.