Sherry set the cup down, spilling a splash of coffee on her thumb. “A few sleepless nights? No, I don’t think so, Father. I wouldn’t call being locked in a box while your parents are butchered above you and then living through eight years of nightmares a few restless nights!”
The priest didn’t flinch at the words. “Let me tell you a story, Sherry. I think it may bring this into perspective for you.
“One day not too many years ago, near the end of World War II, a common man—a doctor—was detained and brought to a detention camp with his wife. His twelve-year-old son was in the safekeeping of his grandmother, or so the doctor thought. In reality his captor, an obsessed man named Karadzic, had also found the boy. Bent upon breaking the doctor’s spirit, they placed the man in a cell adjacent to two other cells—one holding his wife and the other holding his son. Of course he did not know his son was in captivity—he still thought he was safe with his grandmother.
“The wife’s and son’s mouths were strapped shut and each day all three were brutally tortured. The doctor was told that the screams from the cell on his left were his wife’s screams, and those on his right were the screams of a vagrant child, picked from the streets. He was told that if he ordered the child’s death, both he and his wife would be spared, and if he refused, they would both be killed on the eve of the seventh day.
“The doctor wept continually, agonizing over the groans of pain from his wife’s cell. He knew he could spare her with the death of one stray child. Karadzic intended on dragging the son’s body in after the doctor had ordered his execution, in the hopes of breaking his mind.
“But the doctor could not order the child’s death. On the seventh day both he and his wife received a bullet to the head, and the boy was released.” The priest paused and swallowed. “So the doctor gave his and his wife’s lives for another, not even knowing it was that of his own son. Does this seem fair to you, Sherry?”
Sherry’s head swam in the horror of the tale. Another emotion muddied the waters of her mind—confusion. She didn’t respond.
“We don’t always understand why God allows one to die for another’s life. We don’t easily fathom God’s Son’s death. But in the end”—he swallowed again—“in the end, Sherry, we will understand what Christ meant when he said that in order to save your life you must lose it.”
Petrus looked away and shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe my parents’ death saved me for this day—so that I might speak these words to you.”
Sherry dropped her jaw. Father Petrus was the boy? “You were—”
The priest looked back to her and nodded, smiling again. “I was the boy.” Tears wet his cheeks and Sherry’s world spun. Her own eyes blurred.
“One day I will join my parents,” the father said. “Soon, I hope. As soon as I have played my role in this chess match.”
“They both died for you.”
He turned away and swallowed.
Her chest felt as though it might explode for him. For her. She had lived through the same, hadn’t she? Her father had died for her above that box.
The father had found love. Love for Christ. In some ways, she had as well.
“What is it with death? Why is the world filled with so much violence? Everywhere you turn there is blood.”
He turned back to her. “In living we
all
eventually die. In dying we live. He has asked us to die.
Take up your cross and follow me
. Not a physical death necessarily, but to be perfectly honest, we of the West are far too enamored with our own flesh. Christ did not die to save us from a physical death.”
“That doesn’t remove the horror of death.”
“No. But our obsession with life is as evil. Who is the greater monster, the one who kills or the one who is obsessed with their own life? A good strategy by the dark side, don’t you think? How can a people terrified of death climb up on the cross willingly?”
The statement sounded absurd and Sherry wasn’t sure what to make of it.
“In the great match for the hearts of men, it isn’t who lives or dies that matters,” Petrus said. “It’s who wins the match. Who loves God. We each have our part to play. Do you know what the moral of my parents’ story is?”
She looked at him.
“The moral of the story is that only true, selfless love will prevail. No greater love hath a man than to lay down his life for a friend. Or a son. Or a stranger in a cell next to you.”
“Your parents
died
.”
“We
all
die. My parents defeated Karadzic. Their love set me free to do what it is I must do.”
“So do you think I’ve been brought to the jungle to die?” she asked.
He tilted his head down slightly. “Are you
ready
to die, Sherry?”
A ball of heat washed over her skull and swept down her spine. It was the way he asked the question.
Are you ready to die, Sherry?
No.
It all swam through her mind—her parents’ deaths, the father’s story, her own nightmares—they all swirled together to form this lump that swelled in her throat.
She stood and walked into the kitchen. “What’s there to eat?”
DAVID LUNOW handled the paper cup gingerly. Someone had told him that coffee grew acidic once its temperature fell below 170 degrees. He supposed real connoisseurs could gauge this with the dip of their tongue. All he ever managed was a blister and a curse. Either way, in his opinion, good coffee was always piping hot.
Mark Ingersol stood next to him on the arching park bridge and stared at the brown water below. “I know you hold some reservations about going after Casius, and frankly, I share them. But that doesn’t mean we don’t follow our orders. Neither does it mean we slack off. If the director wants us to take Casius out, then we take him out. Period.”
“In my opinion, you’re begging for problems,” David said. “This is the kind of thing that blows up in your face.” He felt Ingersol’s stare, but he refused to look. “We’ve been at this two days and already Casius has walked in and out of our fingers, stopping just long enough to let us know that he was fully aware of our pursuit. We’re lucky he didn’t lure our man into some alley and kill him.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t change our objective here. And that objective is to kill Casius.”
Ingersol picked up a pebble that rested on the railing and flicked it into the water. It landed with a
plunk
and disappeared. “Well, we’ll find out soon enough. The Rangers will be inserted before nightfall.”
David leaned on the railing. “If they fail, I suppose you could always carpet bomb the jungle. You might get lucky.” If Ingersol saw any humor in the statement, he showed no reaction. “Actually, if the teams fail, you wait for Casius to come out and hope to catch him on the rebound. Like I initially suggested.”
“What are the Rangers’ chances?” Ingersol asked.
David turned to Ingersol. “You mean chances of walking out of that jungle alive, or chances of killing Casius?”
Ingersol looked up at him blankly.
“Either way, some people are going to die. The only question is how many,” David finally offered, and then added for Ingersol’s benefit, “and who ends up taking the fall for it all.”
CAPTAIN RICK Parlier blinked at the sweat snaking into his eyes. His square jaw sported three days of stubble, efficiently covered by a healthy layer of green camouflage paint, accentuating the whites of his eyes. His right hand gripped a fully loaded M-16. His left hand vibrated loosely to the thumping Pratt and Whitney above them. His last cigar protruded from curled lips. He was going back in, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
Parlier glanced at the others sitting expressionless in the dimming light and turned his head to the trees rushing below. The blades of the DEA troop carrier beat persistently above him as the helicopter carried his team farther and farther into the uncharted jungle. He’d taken Ranger teams into the jungle three times before, each time successfully accomplishing the objective laid before him. It was why he’d been selected, he knew. He could count the number of men with active jungle combat on a few hands. Now desert, that was different—a whole flock of them had tasted battle in the desert. Not that they’d actually fought much, but at least there had been real bullets flying around. Neither environment was what most would call a blast. But then, except in literal terms, war never was. He preferred the jungle anyway. More cover.
He’d thought the use of three teams to take out one man a bit hyperactive at first. But the more he read up on Casius, the more his appreciation for the two helicopters chopping in the sky behind them grew.
Three teams: Alpha, Beta, and Gamma, he’d dubbed them. Eighteen of the best jungle fighters in the Rangers’ arsenal. The plan was simple enough. They would be dropped off on the summit of a mountain overlooking the val- ley Casius was supposedly headed for. The teams would set up observation posts and send scouts into the valley. Once positive identification had been made, they were to terminate the target at the earliest possible opportunity. Until then, it would be a game of waiting.
Only one restriction hampered their movement. Under no circumstances were they to pass the cliffs. Why? Why did the bureaucrats place any of their nonsensical constraints on them?
He glanced over his men, who sat unmoving. Behind those closed eyelids lives were being lived, memories recalled, procedures rehearsed. His first lieutenant, Tim Graham, looked up. “Piece of cake, Cap’n.”
Parlier nodded once. Graham was their communications man. Give him a diode and a few capacitors and Tim could find a way to talk to the moon. He could also wield a knife like no man Parlier had ever seen, which was probably the single greatest reason the army had managed to steal the boy away from eager electronics firms.
The rest of the team consisted of his demolition expert, Dave Hoffman; his sniper, Ben Giblet; and two other light-fighters like himself: Phil Crossley and Mark Nelson. The team had trained and fought together for two years. There could hardly be a tighter fit.
His mind wandered to the target’s portfolio. Casius was an assassin with “numerous” confirmed kills, the report said. Not ten or sixteen, but “numerous,” as though it was a secret number. A sharpshooter who favored a knife, which meant he had the nerves of a rhino. Anybody who had the skill to take out a target at a thousand yards yet chose to get up close, eyeball to eyeball, had a few screws loose above them eyeballs. The worst of it was the man’s apparent adaptability to the terrain. Evidently he had grown up in this jungle.
“What odds you put on this guy lasting the day?” Graham asked.
Phil scoffed. “As far as we know the guy’s back in Caracas smokin’ a joint and laughing his head off at the Rangers streaking off to pop some white man in leech country.”
Someone chuckled. Hoffman eyed Phil. “They wouldn’t send three teams to a drop point unless they had it on good intel this guy would show up.”
“You don’t get good intel this deep, my friend.”
“Ready the drop line,” Parlier barked as the helicopter feathered near the summit of their drop zone. The troop carrier hovered over a break in the canopy. Hoffman threw the two-hundred-foot rope overboard. Parlier nodded and he dropped into the trees, disappearing below the canopy. One by one the Rangers lowered themselves into the trees.
DEEP WITHIN the mountain, Yuri Harsanyi sat shivering with excitement. In less than an hour a helicopter would take him away to safety. And with him, the large black suitcase that held his future: two thermonuclear weapons.
He had carefully stored the devices in his case the night before and then secured the straps tightly around the leather bag. The replacement bombs sat powerless in Abdullah’s casings. When he tried to detonate his bombs, he would get nothing but silence. By then Yuri would be far removed, living a new life, squandering away his newfound wealth. He had rehearsed the plan a thousand times in the last three days alone.
Yuri saw that the left strap had loosened slightly in the humid heat. He cinched it tight and hoisted the suitcase from the floor. If they decided to inspect him now, he would have a problem, of course. But they’d never checked his bags before. He glanced around the room he’d lived in for so long and stepped away for the last time.
An hour later, precisely on schedule, the helicopter wound up and took off with Yuri sweating on its rear bench.
CASIUS PLUNGED through the dense foliage, sweating bare chested, with mud plastered up his legs and streaking his chest, his black shorts now clinging wet and torn down the right thigh. He’d covered forty miles in the twenty-four hours since entering the jungle, tracking by the sun during the day and by the stars at night. He’d slept once, eight hours earlier. His father would have been proud of him.
But then his father was dead.
Casius halted at the edge of a twenty-foot swath cut from the forest floor, surprised to see the wide scar so deep in the jungle. The canopy above had survived and now grew together, creating the appearance of a large tunnel through the underbrush.
He pulled out a wrinkled topographical map. The compound lay ten miles to the east, in the direction of this wide overgrown path. Casius crossed into the jungle and resumed his jog.
Since his departure from the city, he’d eaten only papaya and yie palm cut on the run, but hunger pains now slowed his progress. Without a bow and arrow, killing a heron or a monkey would be difficult, but he needed the protein.
Ten minutes later he spotted the root that would give him red meat. Casius took his knife from his belt, cut deep into a twisted
mamucori
vine, and let the poisonous sap run over his blade. Under normal conditions the Indians dissolved the poison in boiling water, which would evaporate from any dipped surface, leaving only deadly residue. But he had neither the time nor the fire necessary for the application.
Finding the howler monkeys was like finding a traffic light in the city. Approaching them undetected wasn’t nearly as simple. The small animals had an uncanny sense of danger. Casius slipped behind a tree and eyed a group of five or six howlers shaking branches fifty meters away, high in a Skilter tree. He slid into the open and crept toward them. The approach was painstakingly slow, and for fifteen full minutes he inched forward, until he came to rest behind a large palm. Four monkeys now sat chattering unsuspecting on the end of a branch that hung low, no more than twenty meters from his position. Casius slipped from behind the tree and hurled his knife into the group.