Authors: John Strauchs
“John, the reverend is Hamid,” whispered Jared into his sleeve mike. The channel
was open to the snipers in the parking lot.
John and the snipers were wearing bone
phones. For the moment, they were all a single organism.
John started running for the altar with the special tactics squad on his heels. The
snipers had the reverend in their calibrated sights, waiting for the green signal in their
scopes to flash. The wedding party was moving around, in and out of the line of fire. No
one in the wedding party had any idea about what was happening. Krissy caught sight of
John running. Jake was confused. Jenny knew what was happening and was terrified.
Hamid knew that one way or another he was about to die. How didn’t matter. He
would be in paradise in a few more seconds.
He saw the snipers.
If they shot him, it
would still go off.
It was foolproof. His triggering device was reversed.
He had to hold
the trigger closed to keep the bomb belt from detonating.
He wanted to see the terror in the eyes of the infidels.
More than anything, he
wanted to watch Jared’s face as everyone he cares for is seconds from going to Hell. He
used his free hand to lift the surplice so everyone could see the explosives and shrapnel
wrapped around his body. A woman in the front row screamed. He had won. He accomplished the impossible and now there was nothing anyone could do to stop him.
Nothing happened. Hamid pressed the spring-loaded trigger open and closed. The
bomb belt would not detonate.
Hamid wailed.
Seconds later John hit him with an open
field tackle, driving them both off the pavilion stage to the ground. He rolled away as the
Special Tactics Team pinned Hamid’s arms and legs. Lars was on top of all of them and
had to be pulled off by John. One of the team members began cutting wires. Another cut
the webbing on his belt with a Kershaw knife. They worked like a single machine. They
had practiced this a thousand times and could act in unison in seconds without thinking
about what needed to be done. The belt was ripped from Hamid’s body and immediately
dropped behind the sea wall where it could no longer harm anyone.
There was pandemonium.
Many of the guests retreated to their cars or into the
church. They didn’t know where it was safe so they kept changing directions. Ingrid was
with Krissy and Jenny. Krissy was sobbing. Jenny was consoling Krissy and her mother.
Ingrid’s face was flushed but she remained calm—even defiant.
Jake was on the lawn
screaming at Hamid. One of the FBI agents was holding him back, but he didn’t struggle
against the hold all that much. The Special Tactics Unit had Hamid on his feet and
dragged him to a waiting vehicle that had just pulled up. Hamid stopped struggling. He
knew it was over and that he had failed.
“Holy Shit,” said Brett, running over to Jared.
Jenny ran into Jared’s arms and hugged him.
“Thank you, Jared. I don’t know what to say,” said Jenny.
“I’m so sorry that I brought this to Krissy’s wedding,” said Jared.
“I shouldn’t
have come to the wedding.”
“We all knew that this was a possibility.
He could have gone after anyone you
cared about, any time and any where.
Now we don’t have to live in constant fear.
You
did the right thing, Jared. I trusted that you would never allow anything to happen to us. I
absolutely knew it wouldn’t,” said Jenny. “Hamid had no idea who he was dealing with.”
“How did you prevent the bomb from detonating, Jared?” asked Brett.
Jared pointed to the chair he had been sitting in.
“That suitcase contains a small HERF—a high energy radio frequency device. It
created a focused pulse that destroyed the solid-state triggering mechanism that Hamid
was using to detonate the C4. Most explosives require a great deal of energy for detonation; sometimes a step-up series of ever increasing energy levels are required. Mind you,
this was always intended to be a last resort countermeasure.
Not knowing exactly what
kind of triggering mechanism he was using, there was always a chance that a HERF
wouldn’t stop the firing sequence.
There is even a rare circumstance where the HERF
could cause a detonation.
I analyzed the probabilities and the technology the terrorists
have been using and concluded that the odds were very good that it would work as intended. Luckily, I was right,” said Jared.
“Neat,” said Brett.
“I am afraid that I also destroyed a lot of digital watches, cell phone, cameras—
what have you,” said Jared.
“Is it over Jared?” asked Jenny.
“This time it’s really over. Everything!” said Jared. He hugged Jenny tightly.
The three of them saw John coming out of the rectory.
The real reverend was
with him. There was a bad bruise on the reverend’s forehead.
“Hamid had the reverend bound and gagged in a back room,” said John.
“Evidently, Hamid hid in the church or rectory before we even thought about it. He must have
come out of hiding as soon as the Bureau guys showed up to do a sweep.
Hamid was
cleaning silver candlesticks when they came upon him, so they worked around him figuring he belonged to the church. I have to say that Hamid had a lot of cool.”
“Why didn’t he kill the real reverend?” asked Brett.
“You can’t be sure, but the Koran speaks very reverently of Jesus and identifies
him as a holy man and a messenger of God, albeit an entirely human being and not the
son of God. Being a devote Muslim, I don’t think that Hamid wanted to risk killing a reverend moments before he was about to ascend to Heaven,” said Jared.
The reverend began to gather the scattered flock. Jenny took Krissy back into the
church to fix her makeup and wedding dress. Lars was tending to Ingrid, who was still
upset. Jake was back in the pavilion with his buddies.
The guests slowly went back to
their seats.
They had a lot of questions and the pavilion was buzzing with subdued conversations. A few guests had disappeared entirely. It took an hour, or so, but the wedding
was finally resumed, but this time with the real reverend.
Episcopal weddings are quick. The entire ceremony didn’t take longer than about
twenty minutes. The bride and groom were met by a white horse pulling a wedding carriage. The guests piled into their cars and drove to the reception. It was a loud and long
reception.
The dance floor was full and crowded, exactly as Krissy had hoped it would
be. Ingrid didn’t care for most of the music, but Krissy loved it. She picked Jared for the
father and daughter dance. She melted into Jared’s arms as they danced. He could have
easily fallen in love with Krissy had he met her first.
But he put that out of his mind as
being an idle and purposeless thought.
He loved Jenny first. The reception had every
cliché that anyone could imagine. The dinners were outstanding. Jared brought up caterers from Boston to supplement the already outstanding staff from the resort.
The Secret Service showed up before the reception started and hung around in the
background all evening.
President Obama did show up after all.
He and Jared had an
animated conversation in the rear of the ballroom. Jenny could see that they shook hands
and that Obama patted Jared on the shoulder as he was leaving. The President congratulated the bride and groom at the head table on his way out. He handed something to Krissy. Ingrid almost passed out when the President saluted the mother of the bride. Jake
looked catatonic. The sole newsman from a local paper was snapping photos as fast as the
motor drive on his camera would allow. Despite everything, it was a perfect wedding as
far as Krissy was concerned. She owed it all to Jared. He made it happen.
It was two o’clock in the morning.
The bride and groom retreated to the bridal
suite.
In the morning they would be on their way to Cancun—Jared’s wedding present.
Jenny went back to Jared’s room in the Inn. Jenny imagined that they were back on
StarWind. She could hear the surf from their room. They made love all night long.
No one had heard from Jared for three months.
He disappeared a few days after
Krissy’s wedding, although no one was certain exactly when he left the country. It wasn’t
even clear that he had left the United States although that is what everyone assumed.
Jared had deeded Eagle’s Head and all structures to Jenny.
He paid all the taxes, or at
least as much as he legally could. The IRS had ways of double taxing the same money.
Jenny moved into the A-frame in early October. She dropped out of her graduate
program at the university.
He left her quite a bit of money so she didn’t have to work.
Her pregnancy was beginning to show as she approached the end of her first trimester. To
Jenny’s great surprise, Marie Bird came by the house a few times a week just as if Jared
were still living there. They didn’t speak much, but she was nevertheless a great help and
comfort. When Jenny’s morning sickness started, Mrs. Bird came by more frequently.
As the weeks passed, Jenny walked the empty house waiting to hear from him.
Ginger was gone too.
It was quiet and lonely. Jenny would sit on the back porch in a
heavy winter coat, hoping to catch a glimpse of Jared’s red shorts running through the
woods. At least once a day she would walk to the pond on the island where they had
spent enchanting hours together.
It was still lovely in winter, especially once the pond
froze and the birches and pines were frosted with snow, but everything Jenny hoped to
find there was gone. Jared. The loons. The flowers. Even the amber was gone—the piece
that Jared brought from the Baltic was no longer on the beach. He had taken it so that a
new land would know who he was and were he had come from. Living on Eagle’s Head
was no longer as it had been, and perhaps it never would be that way again.
At Jenny’s urging, Brett flew to Panama to find him.
Jared left a retainer that
would last for years, as well as several powers of attorney, divided between Brett and
Jenny depending on the nature of the powers granted.
After returning, Brett traveled to Eagle’s Head to report to Jenny what he found
out.
“All of the building materials are still sitting at the shipyard.
He never built the
house he talked about,” said Brett
“Was he actually been seen there?” she asked.
“His friends saw him arrive in San Blas, but then he disappeared.
He only had a
rucksack. Nothing else.”
“This house is so empty, Brett.
What happened to him?
Why did he leave like
that?” asked Jenny.
“I don’t know, Jenn. I just don’t know,” he said.
“I do have one notion.
Its nuts, really! Did you notice that he took Ginger with
him, or at least, she isn’t here now,” said Jenny.
“No, I didn’t notice that. You mean she isn’t on the house computers?”
“Vanished. Gone. And here’s the nutty part. I think Jared fell in love with Ginger. He sort of ran off with her,” She said.
“That IS nuts.”
“You had to have been there.
Jared and Ginger would talk for hours some evenings about science, philosophy, evolution…just about anything.
They even joked with
one another. You saw that British schoolgirl outfit, didn’t you? You could have never
known that she was an interactive computer program.”
Jenny was paused, thinking.
“You know, I never saw what Ginger looked like until the island was attacked.
Prior to
that, Jared only had her audio on when I was around.”…She paused again…And speaking of the night of that horrible fire, Ginger probably saved my life by preventing me
from leaving the safe room.
I think she was ready to sacrifice herself to save me.
Jared
ordered her to upload herself to some safe location on the Internet that they had prearranged but she stayed in the burning house to manage the sprinkler systems and fire
doors,” said Jenny.
“Jenn, I never heard that stuff,” said Brett.
“Tell me honestly.
Have you ever seen anything like Ginger?
Anywhere? The
first time you saw her, didn’t you think she was actually a real woman who had been videotaped?
Think about it Brett.
Aren’t Jared and Ginger more alike than you or I are
like Jared? You told me earlier that he had a hundred computers…or whatever the number was…shipped to Panama. What do you think Ginger would be like on a supercomputer running a program written by a megagenius like Jared?
Brett…he’s making Ginger
evolve.
Jared told me himself that he was born as an evolutionary prototype of the human of tomorrow. I think Jared fell in love with Ginger and is now recreating her in his
own image,” said Jenny. “I know she was already in love with him…if you can imagine
that. I knew that for certain the night of the fire,” said Jenny.
“Jenn, get serious. I can’t envision a guy like Jared preferring to jerk off in front
of a computer screen,” said Brett.
“Don’t be crude,” she said.
“I don’t see it. Granted I’ve only seen and talked to Jenny a few times, but she’s
not real. She’s not a woman. She’s just a computer program with a female voice. There’s
some other reason he disappeared,” he said.
“Why did he have all those computers shipped to Panama? Explain that. Speaking of which, what happened to those computers? That might be a clue,” she said.
“Someone picked them up and trucked them away, but it wasn’t Jared.
It was
some stranger with the right paper work for Ginger Siemels.”
“And that’s another thing, Brett. Ginger Siemels? What does that tell you?” she
asked.
“That’s nothing, Jenn.
The manifest needed a name. Any name. The bottom line
is that Ginger is nothing but a whole bunch of zeros and ones.
She’s not real.
You’re
real, Jenn. Jared loved you. I’m certain of that,” said Brett.
“I appreciate you saying that, but I don’t know if I believe it,” said Jenny.
“You can’t have closeness and intimacy with a computer,” he said.
“As important as sex always was to Jared…and believe me…it was very, very
important…and I’m surprised I’m saying this…it may not be the most important thing in
his life.
Having someone who is like him may be what he has always wanted most. I
don’t think that…if I’m right about this…that he has a romantic attachment to Ginger. I
think it is a profound intellectual…perhaps emotional…attachment,” she said.
“I hope you’re not right about this.
If it doesn’t work out, and I don’t see how it
ever could, I think he’ll blow his brains out for real this time,” said Brett.
That was painful to hear even though Jenny already had the same thought. Jared
was suicidal. He had been for many years. Maybe Ginger could save him too. Maybe she
is what he needs right now.
She loved Jared so much that she could conceive of losing
him if it meant saving his life.
“Did you ever tell Jared that you were expecting?” asked Brett.
“No, but I’m sure he knew.
Jared knew that Krissy was pregnant before Krissy
knew.”
“Then it makes no sense. He would have wanted to be with you. He would have
wanted to see his child. This whole freakin mess makes no sense,” said Brett.
“I think that Jared will have a son or a daughter who will be a lot like
him…maybe exactly like him…and after that Jared won’t be alone anymore. There will
be someone else in the world that is like him. Maybe he’ll come back then,” said Jenny.
Still, she couldn’t come up with any reasonable explanation of why Jared disappeared and abandoned her. Jared was ultra-logical and it wasn’t logical that he wouldn’t
want to see his child being born. Maybe he will return to see his baby born. She had finally convinced herself that he loved her as much as she loved him. Maybe she was wrong
about that after all. Jenny knew she had lost her innocence. She saw men savagely killed
by Jared. She saw a homeless man burn to death. She was brutalized by a sadistic fiend,
and worse, she would have killed that monster if she had been able to. She would have
killed. Maybe Jared no longer wanted her because she was no longer innocent.
She
didn’t know. She didn’t have any answers…only questions.
Or, he could be dead.
He may have run off into the jungle that he felt more at
home in than anywhere else.
He may have gone home to die and finally end his misery…to kill that Black Dog. In any event, Jared was to cultivating his own garden.
Jenny decided she was going to wait for Jared to return. She was willing to wait
for a very long time if she had to.
Maybe after their child is born, he’ll return to them.
Maybe!