Epilogue (cont.)

A small commotion broke out on the lawn. A child was crying. Apparently there was some dispute over toys. Wendy was involved. Sara headed out to smooth things, but Ben said, “She’s being two years old,” and he went to his daughter before Sara, who stayed by John, glad to have the opportunity to talk to him by herself when both their spouses were at a distance.           

“I’m so glad for you, John,” Sara said. “Your wife is lovely.”           

“Thank you. Yes, we’re very happy.”           

“And what will you do? I hope you stay in Denver except I suppose Uma’s work—“           

“We’ll stay here for awhile and then go to England for a while.  She has a place there which will be our home base, and we have to think of our daughter now. Of course, I miss everyone. And now you and Ben have a little girl to complete things.”           

Sara was looking out at the children and the grownups with them. She smiled. “I suppose you’re wondering, aren’t you, and not quite sure how to ask.” She turned and looked full at John.           

He studied her face for a long moment in the old way.           

“I am wondering but I probably don’t have to ask. You look happy. That tells me just about everything.” 

“Maybe I’m happy over every thing. Or a few things. Maybe I’m happy today because you’re here and you’re obviously happy. Maybe I won’t look happy tomorrow when you’re not here to see.”           

“Whoa—“ John laughed. He frowned a little too in his old quizzical look at her from a time when just about everything that happened was a puzzle.           

“He looks and sounds fine.”           

Both of them looked out again at the “storm center” of the children’s birthday party where little two-year old Wendy was clearly the eye of it, even with older kids present. They were all playing a game and Wendy was being bossy, bold, and charming. She was running around, shrieking, with Andrea’s three-year old boy chasing her. She had just taken his toy although he didn’t seem to mind if only she’d stay still for a few minutes. Now she was dancing around in circles, trying to make herself dizzy, and he and some of the others quickly started imitating her, a few of them dropping like flies.           

“She’s exactly like him, isn’t she?” John said.           

“Um hmm,” Sara said through closed lips.           

“Wow.”           

Ben was simply watching his daughter quietly.           

“You should’ve called her Benita. Or whatever is the feminine,” John said.           

“You’re wondering how Ben is. Good Ben? Bad Ben? Can you tell?”           

“I think so. I heard him rant a little when we first came in. At Stan and you. And then be nice. Don’t tell me he’s as normal as…blueberry pie?”           

“I think that’s apple.”           

Now a tantrum had erupted out on the lawn. Wendy had pushed Roger and he fell on his backside and started crying. His mother, Andrea, tried to soothe him and his father, Stan, sent a dirty look toward Ben, who was likewise gentling down little Wendy.           

John and Sara went a little closer, and John would’ve gone even into the group around the kids, but Sara put a hand on his arm, as if she wanted them to stay where they were.           

The two children were eyeing each other in the circle made by the guests. Roger was wiping his teary eyes, casting baleful looks at Wendy, leaning against her father’s knees. Ben was quiet, just observing, apparently wanting to allow the kids, even these very young ones, to settle their own differences. 

John was admiring Ben’s restraint and turned his face to Sara to corroborate that this was, indeed, a good, calm, ordinary guy. Sara turned his face back with her hand, her eyes on the kids.           

Without any prompting, Wendy started across toward the aggrieved little boy, a year older than she. She came up to him, against his mother’s knees, and stopped. She reached up her little hand to his face and fitted it against the soft round corner of it. Roger’s eyes brightened and he grinned.           

“Oh, no—“ John groaned.           

“Oh, yes,” Sara moaned.           

“Then that means…genetically…?”       

“Whatever,” Sara said.  

The End

 

Dear Readers: 

So, we leave Ben Adams and his family living a “normal” life in Denver.  Except, what was that about little Wendy…? 

Thanks for coming along for the journey.  If you care to make any comments, I would love to have them. 

 

 

 

Epilogue: Exactly Two Years and Nine Months Later

A birthday party was in progress at the Cherry Hills Village home of Ben and Sara Adams. Guests were still arriving. The party was held in the spacious back yard, with tables set up on the patio and a grill fired up and presided over by Ben. Sara busily went back and forth, seeing to details, greeting her guests, and dealing with the party’s honoree. She had two spots of color in her cheeks, Sara did, from all the commotion and anticipation. Some old friends were coming, including one whom she greatly looked forward to seeing, John Blake.           

She and Ben had not seen him for a long time, well, about two and three-quarter years, to be exact. John had stayed in Europe to take that world tour he’d always wanted to take. He first went to England to serve as technical advisor on the movie Guy made about Ben, and then had gone off on his own, having a wonderful time, so his infrequent post cards told those back at home. Actually, not on his own, for he’d gotten married to the chief scriptwriter on Ritchie’s movie. And so he was bringing his bride today whom everyone was eager to meet. John married?! Sara knew she’d have to get used to that idea.           

Another newly-wed couple was among those gathered on the grounds in Cherry Hills Village. Christina and Harry Hanks. The captain had recovered nicely from his wounds, no doubt because his brow and a few other parts of him had been so comforted by Christina in the hospital, for she’d stayed on a bit, too.           

Hey Zeus brought the Hanks’; he’s insisted, and of course they indulged him because it was touching to see his pride in his new “rig,” the flagship taxicab of the fleet with which he conducted the business he and Ben had gone into, made possible by Ben’s share of the movie profits.

           

The guest of honor was entertaining some of the guests down on the lawn. Brian, who’d sprouted up in the last two plus years, was entranced, and a willing slave.           

Andrea Wiser, Ben’s former colleague at Paradigm, Inc., had just arrived, with her husband Stan, and their son, a handsome lad of three. They were talking to Ben, who was turning hamburgers and hot dogs with a long-handled fork and spatula.           

“She is adorable,” Andrea said. “She looks just like you. Well, except her hair is dark like Sara’s. But her eyes—umm!           

Ben looked toward his small daughter, out with the other kids on the lawn.  She’d just turned the “terrible” age of two. Her name was Wendy after his sister who’d died too young.           

“She’s a little villain,” he said, as if being that was the most wonderful thing for a child to be. She was at this moment taking back one of the toys Andrea’s little Roger had picked up. 

“You look well, Ben,” Andrea said. “After all you’ve been through. And you’re in the taxicab business now.”           

“Really?” Andrea’s husband said. “I didn’t know that.” For some good reason, he had never liked Ben. “Wow. Taxicabs. And you still live…here.”           

Hey Zeus sauntered up. He had a girlfriend with him, name of Inez. She was very good looking, and she wore, at a rakish angle, Hey Zeus’ famous black and white checkered cap.           

“Um, who is this?” Stan asked. “One of your hacks?”           

 “No, she’s our dispatcher,” Hey Zeus said.           

“Uh hum,” Stan said, not very pleasantly, giving the young woman a look up and down.            

He popped another beer out of the ice bucket Ben had sitting there. He had arrived holding a beer.           

“We miss you at the office,” Andrea said to Ben. “Would you ever come back?”           

“Hell, no,” Ben said.           

Andrea looked a little nonplussed. “Oh. Well, sorry I asked.”           

The sweat was popping out on Ben’s face. “The fire’s too hot,” he called to Sara. “Dammit, where’s that bottle?”           

She gave him a look but nonetheless went into the house. Christina winked at her husband, who laughed. He quite enjoyed Ben, regardless.           

In a minute Sara was back with a spray bottle full of water. “Here is the mist for your grill, oh, sir,” she said.           

Ben laughed loudly, taking it from her. “When the hell is John coming? He ought to be doing this job.”           

Sara gave him another look.           

Andrea rolled her eyes at Christina.           

Harry Hanks got up and went over to Ben. Inez had gone with Hey Zeus to play with the kids on the lawn where Wendy, despite her small size among the older ones, was being bossy. Ben’s gaze followed her every move.           

“I’ll take over if you like, buddy,” Harry said to Ben. One of Harry’s arms was a little stiff.

Stan said, “You two guys were in the war together, huh?”           

“How do you like your burger?” Ben said.           

“With a chin-chuck, of course,” Stan said.           

Ben handed his spatula to Harry. “Put your chin out.”           

At this moment John and his wife arrived. Her name was Uma. She was beautiful, with an olive complexion, silky dark hair and shining dark eyes. Although not much younger than John, she had the almost wrinkle-free skin many Asian people have. John looked very happy with her. They had a small infant with them.           

“My goodness!” Sara exclaimed. “You kept this a secret? How old? Six months? My, how could you travel?”           

The baby, obviously a girl, wore a smocked dress of gauzy material and had a bow tied in her sparse black hair.           

“She is five months old,” Uma said, speaking English beautifully, as British-Asiatic people do. “And we found her in Bangkok.”           

“What a wonderful find!” Sara murmured, gazing fondly at John and his surprise family, the details of which she and Ben would surely hear when they could sit down to a more intimate visit. She was very happy for John to have at last attained marriage and fatherhood, by whatever means.           

John and Ben were taking each others’ measures, after an all-embracing male hug.           

“The last time I saw you, you weren’t looking so well,” John said.          

Ben smiled, a little inscrutably.           

John longed to “assess” Ben immediately, for he’d had no briefing from Sara or communication from Ben himself during the time that had gone by since they’d last seen each other, when Ben had been so “iffy,” hovering between life and death and many degrees in between. John studied his long-time friend fondly. He looked very well; a bit of wear in his face but who didn’t have that at their age? His hair had a touch of grey and he’d grown back his old mustache, John was amused to see. He wondered if Sara still thought of it as “cruel,” but this upper lip growth of Ben’s was not the carefully preened narrow strip it had been but something more Tom Selleck-like, a bit woolly and with a few grey hairs in it. His hair was medium length, covering all scars of surgeries, bullet wounds and what-not.           

And, actually, Ben had a trace of a paunch, too. Well, no wonder.  His high-tech workout room had been made into Wendy’s bedroom.  His eyes—now, those had been the tell-tale feature. John caught them with his. “Ben—“ 

They were as green as ever as they looked back at John’s. But was that devastating look still in them that reduced strong men to tears and women to willing slaves? John couldn’t tell yet.  Ben’s eyes had some hidden depths in them. He’d be patient; he’d find out. But it wasn’t instantaneous as it had been before.           

“And you have a lovely little daughter,” John said. “Wendy. That’s very nice.”           

Ben smiled. He was watching her play with her small guests. “Yes, she was a surprise. Remember that night at the compound? You and I had taken a walk and had a talk. And the next day I was to meet—“           

“Yeah, I remember that evening well. You called me a ‘silly s.o.b.’ Shocked the pants off me. You’d been all sweetness and light before.”           

Ben laughed. “And then I went into Sara. And we made Wendy.”           

John gazed at his friend, trying to read him. His guests, neighbors and assorted folks, friends of his and Sara’s, were not clustered about him, hoping to catch glances from his eyes. So, that meant…

   (to be continued)

Chapter 54 (part 3)

Media people were there, reporters with their questions and photographers with their flashbulbs. For the most part they were respectful of Sara and John and Christina and Hey Zeus— The latter was approached on his role driving the Humvee with the wounded Ben inside it, and the former for being Ben’s manager, but after glancing at Sara, Christina said she had “no comment.” Besides, she was somewhat preoccupied with Captain Hanks who’d also been brought to the hospital for his wounds to be treated.           

Guy Ritchie and Madonna had joined them. Guy had wanted to stay on the front lines to capture some of the action, but since Ben was his real draw, he came to the army base to photo-shoot there, but of course at a time like this when Ben’s life hung in the balance, a proper decorum was certainly to be observed. He and Madonna visited with Sara but not for too long, to avoid adding to her stress and exhaustion.           

“A bloody shame,” Ritchie kept repeating. “He was just about back in our arms… You know, his mission, Exceeding Peace, wasn’t all in vain, I should tell you. Half of bin Laden’s forces deserted him and surrendered to our forces.”           

“Really?” John said. “How did that come about?”           

“Through one of bin Laden’s top henchmen, a chap by the name of—what was that, Madge, Sabu somebody—“           

“Kemo Sabi.” Madonna looked sparks at him.           

“Yes,” Guy continued. “He was the brigand who brought Ben back to our lines on his camel, risking his own life, obviously. Ben made a tremendous impact on him. Fellow is a Pastun, which is a warrior tribe in the border land.  They have a strict, ancient code of honor that makes them duty bound to help anyone who seeks refuge, even if it’s their worst enemy.   This one has three or four wives, and their brothers and cousins and whatnot all being very close, he rounded them up and spread the word, so to speak, about Ben. Love, you know. Love of fellow man.” Ritchie fell silent, as if he’d never taken that in fully before. “By Jove,” he said softly.           

“So how did losing part of his army affect bin Laden?” John asked.           

“Oh, he’s snookered now. Reports are that he was ‘frightfully’ shaken by his meeting with Ben. And there was something about a young Arab who was hurt in their encounter miraculously recovering, and becoming kind of an Arabic Ben. He had a head wound and apparently…well, the talk is, once it’s translated, he’s begun to spread Ben’s word.”           

“And do his thing,” Madonna added.           

“You don’t mean,” Christina said, putting her hand to her chin.           

“Yes, I do,” Madonna said. “That’s the skinny. NBC has flown Richard Engel in to do an interview.”           

“If that sweeps the Arab world—“ Ritchie said, his eyes glowing.           

It was too much right now to contemplate. Everyone had all they could think about with Ben’s surgery, which could take hours. Over a dozen doctors were on the surgical team, with twice that many observers from the neuroscientific fields. The entire operation was to be onscreen but no one close to Ben could bear to watch it.           

“Regardless of the outcome—” but Ritchie paused, seeing Sara’s face. Glancing at John, he indicated they should go out into the hall. 

The two men walked up and down. “What’s really at stake?” Ritchie asked. “I could talk to one of the meds but it’s all mumbo-jumbo. They spell it out to you?”           

“What’s at stake,” John said, “is, first, Ben’s survival. And, secondly, how he’ll be if he does survive.”           

“What are the odds on the first?”           

“Fifty-fifty on both outcomes, apparently.”           

“Bugger all! Well, a cup that’s half-full—“           

“Or—I suppose there is a third possibility,” John said. “He could be both ways.”           

“Jekyll-Hyde? Good cop/bad cop?”           

“Something like that.”           

Silence for a few moments as they walked on.           

“You mean he could be like the rest of bloody humanity?”           

“Yeah,” John said. “I guess that’s right.” 

           

Dr. Colonel Margo Fanning at last emerged from the surgical theater, still in her scrubs which looked the worse for wear, even to the cap on her head which almost looked like a squashed chef’s hat. They all stood up, eyes on her face, afraid to even try to decipher what they saw there. John held Sara’s hand tightly as did the other two men the other two women’s. Dr. Fanning looked very weary. She came up to them.           

“Well, it’s over. The bullet is out. And the chips have fallen where they may.”

Chapter 54 (part 2)

    

They were all silent, attempting to let this sink in. But they were thinking the worst and needed some elucidation.           

“You mean—“ John said. 

“We simply can’t predict the outcome of the operation,” the colonel said. She resembled the late Julia Childs, that kind of amiable, overlarge, blousily put together woman, who projected a breezy proficient air but also imparted the slight suspicion that in the execution of her work, she might be a tad slap-dash.           

She addressed Sara directly. “I realize, Mrs. Adams, the terrible decision you now face. Your husband has been a sweetheart the world has fallen in love with. Of course we don’t know yet what effect he’s had on… I understand the battle over there is raging…but our concern is right here, now. Your husband may come out of the operation as changed as I understand he became after his first one. He may revert to being that less than loveable human being. Yes, you see, I’m quite familiar with his history. People here are ga-ga over him and had hoped he’d visit the site of the Wall. He may go back to being the—“ And she had the good grace not to go on. In view of Sara’s expression.           

“Or—“ Dr. Von Stronheim said, “he could be even better than he was.”           

John and Sara looked at each other. They could not imagine a state where Ben was more loving.           

Sara sighed, a tremendous sigh.           

Christina asked, “What would happen if you just left the frigging bullet in?”           

“Si,” Hey Zeus said.           

The colonel got up and scratched her head. Her shirt had billowed out over her pants and there were several spots on her uniform that looked like they could be specks of tissue or blood. She strode up and down a moment.           

“That’s an option we considered, of course. People do go around with shells in their heads and live quite long lives. But the juxtaposition of where Ben’s is to the lateral anterioscope…well, never mind with that. You want to know in simple terms. No. It’s not a viable option. He could die. A massive hemorrhage. Which brings me to saying, Mrs. Adams, that we haven’t much time. We need to operate very soon. And let the chips, as they say, fall where they may.”

 

Sara said, very softly, “What to do about Ben Adams? That’s been like a mantra, hasn’t it?” 

“Yes,” John agreed. 

“I’m thinking of Brian. If he were here and could see his daddy. Would he want him on any terms? I would hate for him to be disillusioned. Fortunately, he seems to have no bad memories of the way Ben was with him before. But now, if the father he loves so much goes back to being an asshole, I just don’t think I could bear to have my little boy’s heart broken.”           

John could’ve rushed in with: “Well, we’d all be back where we started from, the day before everything changed.” But he didn’t because one can’t go back. And he could say to Sara, “And your heart, too.” And he could ask himself, also, if he wanted his heart broken again.           

Sara didn’t need his reply. She said simply, “I love him.” She said no more. They got up and began to walk down the hall toward Ben’s room. Christina and Hey Zeus were coming out of it, as was a nurse, hurriedly. They all had upset looks on their faces.           

A great fear gripped Sara and John. “What—?” they asked. Then they could hear Ben’s voice.           

“What in the f*** is going on here? Why can’t I get some service? Who the s*** runs this place?”           

They went to the door of the room and looked in. Two aides were attempting to control Ben, who was thrashing around on the bed, causing some of the life support lines in his body to whip about.           

“Oh, there you are,” Ben said clearly, at the sight of Sara. “Where the hell have you been? Will you tell these m***f***s to get my clothes? Don’t pay them a red cent until—“ He had raised up, his bandaged head bobbing grotesquely, and even from the doorway, Sara and John could see the look in his eyes. It had no love in it. Then he collapsed back on the bed.           

 

Col. Fanning came down the hallway, obviously in a hurry. Her blonde-grey hair was untidy and her glasses were slipping down her nose. She peered near-sightedly through them at Sara who was standing with John against the wall opposite the closed door of Ben’s room. “I need your decision— Gracious, are you all right? You’re white as a ghost.” A kindly, concerned look came over her face. “Take a few more minutes. Maybe go in the chapel if that would help. I’ll be with the patient. Then I must prep. His condition is deteriorating rapidly.”           

She looked at her large, no-frills wristwatch. “Five minutes.” She reached out and chin-chucked Sara. “Yes, we have that here, too,” and she turned and continued down the hall, moving quickly for a big woman. 

John and Sara walked toward the chapel’s double oak doors. Next to them was a green metal door with a red lighted sign above it, “EXIT.” Sara put her hand on the brass handle of the green door, looking at John.           

“I know,” he said, smiling at her ruefully.           

She continued on to the chapel and paused. “John, would you mind very much if I went in alone?”           

“I understand,” he said. He did but he also minded. He watched her go to a pew up in the front and kneel down. Then he walked back up the hallway, reflecting. God! If he never had to be in another hospital again. He walked up to Ben’s room. No one was there, the door was open, and Ben looked to have lapsed back into unconsciousness. Or they’d given him something to knock him out. That last rant from him was upsetting but like old times with Ben. Hearing the bad words had stirred a bit of nostalgia in him. He had loved Ben even when he’d been the prize s.o.b. And he’d loved him as the angel come briefly to rest on earth.           

Either Ben was hard to live with. Why the hell couldn‘t there be a happy medium?           

He went up to Ben’s bed and stared down at him. Lord, he always looked pretty damned good, no matter what. John felt his own features grow hard as he studied Ben’s face. Suddenly the eyelids opened and the vivid green eyes underneath them fixed on John.           

John caught his breath in shock. In the eyes was a desperate pleading. But for what?           

“Ben!” He leaned down. “What?”           

The eyes struggled to say but then the thin flesh veils came back over them.           

John was deeply shaken. “Ben—“ But there was no response. He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Sara. She was pale but looked more at peace.           

“I told Dr. Fanning to go ahead.”           

She went to the bed. She leaned down to Ben and it seemed to John that she was whispering something into his ear. She touched his still face for a moment, and then turned to John with an actual smile, and they went out.

Chapter 54 (part 1)

“There is an essence of life, of being, if you can break through to it, that reveals something so dear, and it is always good because it was made good in its beginning by a Creator who cannot be anything but good. All living things possess this essence, animals and plants too, all that is alive. It is the essence at the core of being. It is utterly loveable. You see it in the eyes and smiles of children and of old people who have at last shed their baggage. It is in the tenderness of fingers as they caress a piano key or paint a picture or touch a flower. It is in the perfume of the flower, in the smell of the earth…this essence, this love that the Creator out of love put into each living thing on this living planet. Love is the only thing that informs and transforms…” 

Sara could bear to hear no more. She rose from her chair and went out into the stark white corridor. John stayed, looking down at Ben in the bed. He had stopped speaking, his eyes were closed again, and he’d apparently lapsed back into the coma he’d been in and out of for the past ten or so hours. Christina and Hey Zeus were in the room also. They’d been there, all of them, since Ben had been medivaced to the Landstuhl Medical Center at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, and had seldom left his side. John exchanged glances with them but there was nothing to say. Ben, in his delirium, said it for all of them.           

He went out into the hallway to Sara who was standing by a window looking out.           

“Oh, Johnny, did you think our hearts could be broken any more?”           

He sadly shook his head.           

“What he said in there just now was so beautiful. It was like his soul speaking. Beautiful but heartbreaking. It’s like he’s speaking to us from a place way off. You know?”           

“Yes,” John said. He held Sara against his chest, closing his eyes above her hair that lay marvelously against his face. The essence of everything, he thought. Oh…Ben…           

“His speech was fractured last time. And earlier this time when we first saw him. But now it’s clear and distinct.”           

“It likely will become ‘fractured’ again,” John said. “The bullet is—“ It was painful to talk about the bullet but it was there and they couldn’t ignore it.  “—is pressing, apparently, into that area of his brain that was in trouble before, that controls…well, we know what it controls.”           

“It controls what kind of a person you are,” Sara said. She raised her face from his chest and moved back from him. For a moment her features to him looked “washed” and now were hung out to dry, devoid of emotion. But it was only a fleeting look. “And now—“ trying to make her voice strong—“we have to decide.”

You have to, John thought. Although, of course, I will help you. With all I have. My ‘essence.’ But ultimately, my darling, that awful decision is yours to make alone.           

“How much time did Dr. Whatshisname say we had?”           

“Not very long,” John said, recalling the grim conference with the team of surgeons and neurospecialists when they’d arrived from Baghdad after Ben had been helicoptered from the front lines of the coalition forces. The chief of staff was a woman, Colonel Margo Fanning. She had heard of Ben and read of his case in medical literature. She, too, pointed to charts, which to her distraught listeners had become a mass of undifferentiated ganglia, but of course was not, each iota containing the secret and the source of human behavior.           

The neurospecialist, Dr. Wilkie von Stronheim, took up the pointer before the light board. He spoke with a heavy Germanic accent. “Zee patient is obviously in a state of taxia which could be compared to an old fashioned spring loaded mis-sile. Zee bullet in Mr. Adam’s brain is the linchpin, so to speak, upon which equilibrium depends.”           

“In lay terms,” the woman doctor colonel said, “when we go into Ben’s skull to remove the bullet, his brain functions could be catapulted into a sort of ‘free-fall.’ The previous surgery he underwent to clip off the bleeding vessel of his aneurysm, in some unforeseen and quite unusual way, stimulated the maximus cortex here—“ and she indicated on the schemata, “—the empathy center as it’s commonly called, into a ‘sustained activation’ mode…and now the bullet, which we can see here clearly on this scan…”           

At this point Sara closed her eyes and put her head down and John put his arm around her. Hey Zeus blanched, and Christina, although she outwardly kept her attention on the light board, clenched her hands tightly.          

“The removal of the bullet may ‘manipulate’ the dorsal striatum, which as you can see…”           

Only Christina could keep her eyes focused on the subject matter.           

“And in so doing,” the colonel’s voice went on (one tough woman to be able to do this, John thought), there is a risk.”           

She let the sentence hang so that her listeners, who wished she wouldn’t go on in such graphic detail, now leaned forward to hear the rest of what might come.           

“Of upsetting the applecart,” Dr. von Stronheim finished.

Chapter 53

“This is as far as I can take you,” Kemo Sabi said to Ben. “Over there are your lines. Make your way toward them. It will be dangerous but I think A-lah has you in the pupil of his eye.” He gave Ben an impassioned look and put his hand to his breast, lips, and forehead. Ben, as well as he could on camelback, reached out his hand in that familiar gesture. He had not chin-chucked a heavy beard before. Then, with Kemo Sabi’s strong hand helping him, he slid off the camel to the ground.           

“Remove your smagh so your people can see who you are. May all the prophets be with you.” Kemo Sabi prodded his mount into a surprisingly fast gallop back the way they’d come.           

Ben turned toward the coalition lines. He was wearing the dishadasa and the sarwal which he couldn’t part with or else he’d be naked. But would they know who he was or mistake him for an al Queda wired for a suicide mission?           

He’d forgotten he was on camera, especially now, out in the open. A rescue helicopter was headed his way, as well as the two commandoes on camelback, and there were coalition Humvees rocketing about the area. Except it was a no-man’s land, strafed by small-arms fire and possibly mined. Ben crouched low, trying to gauge his immediate way ahead.    

  

The Humvee Captain Hanks had been driving lurched sickeningly, then settled back down hard on its wheels. In the back seat, Christina was thrown on the floor, Hey Zeus against the side. The aide in front was blown out the door, and the Captain was slumped over the wheel, blood running down his face and one arm crumpled.           

Hey Zeus was the first to gather his wits. Christina was moaning, the Captain was silent. “Madre Dios! We are all dying.” Then the cabbie realized he was very much alive. He reached to pull Christina up, but she came up by herself, with a few choice swear words. Hey Zeus looked around. “We’ve got to get out of here!”           

“The understatement of the year. How, run? Is the captain—?” 

“Let me get out and see.” Hey Zeus clambered out the back door, went to the front, and looked in at the captain whose head lay on the steering wheel. Surprisingly, he opened his closest eye.           

“Move me over and get in and drive. My arm is trashed.”           

Hey Zeus’ mouth fell open but he did as he was told, gently but speedily rolled the captain away from the steering mechanism of the giant vehicle. There was no sign of the aide. Christina leaned forward to comfort Hanks, as the cabbie assumed his seat behind the wheel. “Madre Dios, helpppp!”          

But Hey Zeus was unable to suppress a grin as he shifted and steered and plied the controls of the Humvee.           

“Just don’t go crazy,” the captain said, as he slumped into unconsciousness against the breast he’d spent the night on.           

The Humvee rocked as they sped along. “This is awesome!”           

“Be careful!” Christina cried in his ear. “All hell is breaking loose. Wait a minute. Look! Over there—isn’t that—?”           

She was pointing to a running figure trying to make its way alongside the road as well as dodge bursts of noise and flashes of light.           

“Mirablu, si, si! It is Ben.” And Hey Zeus began to shout, ”Over here, Ben!”           

It was indeed Ben. A heliocopter was hovering overhead, a rescue ladder about to be let down.            

“Ben! Ben!” the two in the Humvee cried again, and he heard them. He was on a low hillside opposite the road now. He froze, stared at them, looked uncertain.           

Hey Zeus pulled something out of his shirt, waved it out the window, then put it on his head, then stuck his head out. It was his black and white checkered cabbie’s hat.           

“It’s me, Ben, Hey Zeus, your driver. Get over here and get in!”           

“We’ll take you back!” Christina screamed.           

Ben looked overhead at the copter, then behind him at the dust being raised by two camels coming toward him at a fast clip.           

“All right, here I come!” he called out. He began to run up the hillside toward the Humvee on the road. He was perhaps twenty feet away, and Christina already had the door open for him, tears running down her cheeks, spoiling her mascara, laughing and crying at the same time.           

Ben’s dashasha was flapping and one sandal had come off. His asura was trailing. He had a happy smile on his face, Christina and Hey Zeus could see.           

A pair of desert eyes could see also. And what they couldn’t was augmented by the powerful scope of a Russian-made carbine. Just as Ben reached the crest of the hill, the trigger was pressed.           

Ben still had the smile on his face when he fell, practically into Christina’s arms. She cried out, with a great fear in her plummeting heart, and with superhuman strength, hauled him into the back seat of the Humvee. His head was streaming blood on the left side. He looked at Hey Zeus with pleading eyes.           

“Take me to the hotel. I’ve got a fleever…hooray,” and he fell sideways.

Chapter 52

“Well, so much for hearts and flowers,” Madonna said to her husband.

“That’s a twee expression, dear, what does it mean?”           

Madonna made a face at Guy.           

“Duh,” he said. And in a more serious tone. “The poor blighter.  He’s stuffed now.” His eyes went to the screen. “Is that a bloody dromedary he’s about to get back on?”           

“Looks bloody like,” his assistant said.           

“Let’s get out there,” Ritchie said. “We’ve got to get this on our film. SAT’s too grainy. What a smashing sight that would be, old Ben galloping toward us on camel back, the angry hordes chasing him!”           

“You’re thinking of a Western,” his wife said. “Camels don’t gallop.”          

“But they can run fast.” Ritchie gave the orders and his crew hustled out the bunker toward their specially equipped Humvee with the cameras mounted. 

 

Two figures in camouflage, a slim one and a short compact one, were making their way along a shell-pocked road toward where all the excitement was coming from. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” the smaller of the two said. 

 

Captain Hanks, at the wheel of his Humvee, negotiated the tricky turns. A Chief Warrant Officer sitting beside him worked a communications device. “I’ve picked up Sergeant Mustapha,” he said. “They’re zero eight hundred bearing toward the probable path of the target.”           

“Roger that,” the captain said. He hoped the road wasn’t mined. What were those two idiot GI’s up ahead thinking they were doing? Strolling to a 4^th of July picnic? When he caught up with them he’d yell for them to rejoin their unit and expect some serious discipline.

           

John and Sara were at the command post but in an outer room.  From time to time someone apprised them of developments. The struggle to apprehend or destroy bin Laden and his forces was something neither John nor Sara could give much thought to. All their concern was for Ben and what was happening to him. They could’ve watched his progress on the monitors, or tried to extract more information from those in the command center, but it was all too clamorous and confusing, and they hadn’t the heart to receive a blow-by-blow description. Nor did they have much to say to one another. They occasionally touched hands or exchanged glances but even that was painful. Finally, John stood up. “This is insane. We should go somewhere quiet, get away from all this.” 

“I wish I were back in England with Brian,” Sara said. “Or, really, back in Cherry Hills Village, and none of this had ever happened.”           

John looked uncertain at these words. “How far back would you want to go?”           

She put her head into her hands. “I wish—“           

But she didn’t finish her wish. 

 

Ben and the camel looked at each other eye to eye. “Don’t you know I love you,” he said, “you sorry-ass excuse for a horse.”  The beast of burden regarded him placidly and made a belching sound. A shadow fell over Ben. He wheeled around to see his guide into this place, Kemo Sabi, on his camel.           

“Quick, get up,” the Arab said, and he reached down and helped Ben climb up onto the rear of his camel’s hump.           

“Where are we going?” Ben asked.           

“Toward your lines if we don’t get our heads blown off first.”           

They began to clip-clop along, fast.           

“I thought you were loyal to him,” Ben said to his rescuer.           

“I am loyal only to A-lah and to what is right. And I told you I would go all the way with you.”           

“Thank you. I hope you won’t get into too much trouble.”           

Kemo Sabi laughed loudly. “We are already in too much trouble. Keep your head ducked.” 

 

Through the open window of the Humvee, Captain Hanks bellowed at the two ambling figures on the road in enlisted men’s uniforms. “What in the f*** do you think you’re do–? Oh, shit, no, don’t tell me. Didn’t I leave you in bed? Quick, get in before you step on a f*** mine or some sniper picks you off. What do you think this is, some kind of picnic?”           

“Now, don’t get your bowels in an uproar,” Christina said, as she and Hey Zeus, looking sheepish, climbed into the back of the Humvee.           

Hey Zeus leaned forward to peer at all the controls on the dashboard. “Wow!”

“Lay low and keep quiet,” the captain grumbled. “Keep those hats pulled down so you pass for soldiers. I could lose my bars for this.”           

The aide in the front was too busy with his radio devices to give more than a surprised look to the new passengers.           

The captain gave his attention to the rocky, twisting road. Grenades and shells burst around them. Suddenly, there was an explosion much too close, and the huge, lumbering vehicle pitched up in the air.

Chapter 51

Ben’s movements were picked up by a GPS tracking device used by Sean and Mustapha at their bivouac a short distance from bin Laden’s encampment. Sean relayed this information to the command center of Exceeding Peace. “Subject has deployed from the Objective.” The order came back: “Cautiously move in to attempt extraction.”           

But the two Special Forces men were on camelback. The al Queda had motorized means of recapturing Ben. He could not be expected to find his camel to escape on, and without a guide he would quickly become lost; besides insurgents were roaming about. But at least Ben’s progress could be tracked by the satellite equipment overhead. A trio of M-16 helicopters was dispatched to spot him. Exceeding Peace had failed. Not even Ben Adams could win over the al Queda leader and influence him to surrender. A full-scale attack was now launched by the various echelons of the coalition forces. Paratroopers queued up in drop planes; Bradley fighting machines set off with their grenade launchers. The word went out via the media embedded with the troops: “Exceeding Peace is Nay Not So.”           

 

Those “embedded with the troops” included Christina D’Ambrozzio. More specifically, she was embedded with Captain Hanks. The two had become quite close in a short length of time. But now the Captain had to report for duty. He quickly pulled on his uniform as she watched from the pillow.           

“So, this means Ben didn’t score with bin Laden?”           

“That would be my guess,” the Captain said, tying his boots.           

“Are you guys going to rescue him?”           

“We’re gonna try.”           

“Poor Ben.”           

Yeah, poor bastard. The Captain shuddered at the thought of finding Ben in more than one piece.           

“What will you do?” Christina asked. “I mean, what’s your role? I’m just curious.”           

He came up to the bed to kiss her goodbye. “I’ll be in a command Humvee. Want to ride with me? I’ve got an extra set of camouflages. Not that they’d fit too well.”           

Christina’s eyes widened. “You’re joking, right? I couldn’t ride with you!” 

He laughed. “I wish you could, sweetheart. We have women along, of course. But they’ve been trained to handle weapons. Not that you don’t, uh, have some pretty powerful ones yourself.” He leaned down to her.           

“Seriously?”           

“No, sweetheart.” And he kissed her lips and left.           

“Bring him back!” she called out.           

The captain wangled his hand above his head meaning “sure thing,” she guessed.           

Christina returned to her own billet, and Hey Zeus rapped on her door. She let out a surprised “whoop!” at the sight of him. He was dressed in a set of enlisted men’s camouflages. “Holy shit! Did you sign up?”           

He grinned at her. “One of the guys loaned them to me because I didn’t have anything clean to wear. I even got a cap.” He put it on. “What do you think?”           

“I think you’d better stay low today so you don’t accidentally get ordered to the front.”           

The cabbie’s eyes shone. “That is the whole idea. I want to go. I want to be there when Ben comes back.”          

“Looney tunes! It’d be way too dangerous. How could you do that?”           

“It won’t be dangerous at all. Old bin’s—Laden’s, that is—days are numbered. They got his whole place surrounded. They just held off because of Ben doing his stuff. But I guess maybe that didn’t work. But anyway, he’ll be riding on his camel and it would be cool if you and me are there to meet him. So, you want to put on a pair of these outfits, too?”           

Christina stared at Hey Zeus as though he were crazy.           

“My friend has a girlfriend soldier about your size.”           

“No kidding?”           

           

Ben pulled his smagh closer about his face, but no one seemed to pay any attention to him. The terrorists were too busy getting ready for the coming assault by the coalition forces, and were scurrying here and there preparing to fight, leave or burrow deeper into their underground hideaways. From behind a hillock, Ben had seen bin Laden, wobbling a bit, come forth from his tent. Some of his men ran up to him and he began to shout and gesture. Ben figured he was giving orders either to look for him or hurry and get the hell out. Maybe both. He wondered about the Arab boy. He had not come out from the tent. He was either unconscious or dead.           

Bin Laden quickly disappeared with his followers. No wonder. The sky was filled with Apache helicopters and F-14 fighters. Ben gave only a moment’s thought to his failed mission. Instead, he recalled vividly the emotions he’d felt toward the gaunt, used-up, terrible figure, and the dream he’d related. He felt they might rush in and overwhelm him, cause him to do something like pull off his smagh and wave it around, shouting, “Here I am!” Or run after bin Laden and attempt to chin-chuck him. Because he had been about to do that, he realized, with surprise. If he had, would he have seen anything change in those impenetrable eyes?           

Small arms and grenade launcher fire burst close by. He’d better try to figure it out later; for now, he had to get moving. Looking around, he saw a camel that must be hard of hearing or just battle-shocked, peacefully grazing. Crouching low, he ran toward the beast, hoping he could remember the Farsi command Mustapha used to get the camel to bow down so he could be mounted. Mustapha and Sean! Of course! They must be headed for him because they would’ve learned of his predicament.

Chapter 50

There was a disturbance outside the tent. The Arab boy burst in. He spoke in rapid Farsi. He looked alarmed. Bin Laden barked out a few things, then smote the air with his hands in a gesture of dismissal. The boy left without looking at Ben.           

“We haven’t much time. Quickly, tell me how my dream would have continued!”           

Rapid thoughts had come to Ben in the few moments but how the al Queda leader’s dream continued wasn’t one of them: he is frail. I could easily overpower him. The brazier is heavy. I could beat his skull in with it. He is trying to trick me. He wants to hold up my severed head on TV all over the world. Sara! Brian! How did I ever get into this f*** mess?!           

Bin Laden fixed him with his eyes, raising his chin, exposing his neck, which, under the scraggly beard, was pale. His neck looked oddly vulnerable, something one doesn’t ordinarily see.           

There were two possible answers to his question. He pushed the child to safety above him, and gave himself to the jaws of the tiger. Or he grasped the boy’s heels, not to push him up out of harm’s way, but to wrest his small hands from the life-giving, life-affirming vines and fling him into the jaws of the beast. Which would satisfy it long enough for his own escape, made easier without the burden on his back of his own inner child. His own better, innocent self.           

Ben closed his eyes to truly visualize it.           

He saw himself on the tree with the child of himself on his back. He felt the hot breath of the tiger, heard its roaring. Already its claws were pulling at his flesh. He saw himself as he had been in all his selfishness and self-interest and greed and blindness.  He opened his eyes and looked at the child who had his own eyes, the same features of his face, the same whorls of his hair. He saw the goodness of the child, the love in the child’s eyes. He saw his own reflection in those clear, lovely eyes, and the child reflected in his eyes. He opened his eyes. And saw the face of bin Laden. But the beard was gone. The impenetrable dark eyes were open and showing things. Secret, hidden things. The eyes looked startled, frightened. Taken unawares. Sweat popped out on bin Laden’s face. He turned even paler than before. His lips began to quiver. His body began to tremble. A great vein stood out below his kufi, his embroidered prayer cap. A cry struggled up from his throat.           

Ben’s hand started up, to reach out. Something in the dark pools saw it, swam in circles, panicked. Ben’s hand came closer. The cry burst from the thin throat.           

“Nooooooo!”

Long, drawn-out, anguished, from the depths of a soul. Bin Laden’s own hand reached out and struck Ben’s hand down, and with great strength, he hit Ben in the chest with his other hand, pushing him so that Ben fell backwards off the cushion.           

“Foreign devil, son of Satan, accursed infidel!” Bin Laden leapt to his feet, moving with astonishing speed. “You dare to—“ He picked up the heavy brazier. Ben was crouching on the ground. Bin Laden lifted it above Ben’s head and began to swing it downwards.           

The Arab boy rushed in—he must have been watching all the time through the opening of the tent—and he came between the two men and took the blow.           

The heavy brass object, with all the force of a sledge-hammer, struck him on his temple. Blood began to spurt, and he fell into Ben’s arms, his head into Ben’s lap. He looked up at him with eyes that were glazing from pain and shock. Ben cradled him tenderly. He could feel bin Laden’s hot breath and hear his rasping breathing. He looked up into his face as the boys’ eyes were closing.           

What he saw was terrible. A battle being waged. Hatred versus love. A life and death struggle.           

Bin Laden’s hands fumbled beneath his robe, at the sash around his waist. He drew out a dagger. “I give my heart only to A-lah.”  He lunged the dagger toward Ben.           

But Ben had come out of his trance now. Swiftly putting the youth aside, he leapt up and wrestled the weapon out of bin Laden’s hand. The two grappled like they were Indian wrestling, their feet set on the Persian carpets.           

Outside had begun a loud commotion. There were shouts and cries and the rotor noise of attack helicopters blasting the air like shell bursts.           

“You threw the boy to the tiger,” Ben said to the livid face close by his own.           

He pushed bin Laden from him so that he staggered backwards and fell. He went to the boy on the ground and cupped his face with his hand. Khalid’s lids fluttered and he smiled.           

Ben quickly scooped up his smagh and fled from the tent, donning the headdress and drawing the folds about him.

Chapter 49 (part 3)

Ben looked into bin Laden’s eyes which he could see clearly in the light cast by the brazier. He looked at his gaunt, weary face that seemed to bear the marks of a thousand lifetimes. And he looked into his own heart. What he felt for the man. He sensed, beyond everything the Saudi projected—his past deeds, his present menace, and his doubtful future—pride, a quality that spawned many other things too devious and convoluted to trace down. But, as if what he was trying to see was a great house with many passageways, all was permeated with a vapor of fear. A great fear. Would such an all-encompassing fear ignite compassion in the heart that sees it, a human heart prone to its own errors? Ben saw all this but he could not see the answer in himself. His feelings for others had been clear-cut before. The dream, incidentally, was not difficult. He understood its meaning immediately. And the mastermind of terror must also, unless he was blind which Ben doubted he was. The dream was a terror dream. Absolute terror reduced to its starkest elements: a choice between innocence and evil as symbolized by the Child and the Beast. The Beast had ever known of humankind’s imagination for fearsome, evil death. Dragons and Cyclops and Medusas and Gorgons. Although Ben’s classical education was average, it was a universal knowledge. Every child has nightmares about beasts, be they bears or lions or tigers or huge, hairy spiders. Or, now, creatures from outer space.           

Bin Laden’s eyes yielded nothing. They were obsidian black, featureless. Ben tried to see behind the skull, the grey matter. The heart, trying to beat, not always easy.  When did the eclipse begin in his soul to close out the light? Might as well contemplate Hitler’s adolescence or Stalin’s. Or Ghengis Khan’s or Ulgar the Horrible’s. Ben inwardly shuddered. His contemplation had taken only moments. He felt no love for this man. He felt fear toward him. He felt a strong revulsion. He felt sick. His head was hurting again. He tried to imagine if Jesus, the only God he knew, were facing this man. Or—if he could imagine himself to be A-lah, but he knew nothing about the religion. Obviously, its more fanatical believers must think a one-way plane ride into a tall building filled with infidels was a trip to Paradise. He sighed. It was impossible. His own eyes could not hide what he felt. He let bin Laden see into them. I do not love you. I cannot. God, by whatever name, being the Supreme Love, can (although there is room for doubt!) but I cannot. See!           

Bin Laden seemed to flinch and start. To be surprised somewhat and curiously disappointed. Then pride asserted itself again. The eyes had an unsettling gleam in them. He raised a slim brown hand and snapped his fingers. The boy Khalid came into the tent immediately. Bin Laden merely nodded at the carafe. The boy said something in Arabic, deferentially, and picked up the carafe, no doubt to replenish it. As he left the tent, he stole a glance at Ben.           

He came back in a moment or two and refilled their coffee cups with the steaming brew upon which they could concentrate for a few moments. In the brief interim had been an uneasy silence. Ben wondered what the other had picked up about him. He felt his perceptions were exquisitely attuned. His mission was a failure. His mojo had left him. Now his life could easily.           

Bin Laden drank coffee and then wiped his beard with his hand. He put his cup down. “Tell me about my dream.” 

Ben took a breath and began. Perhaps something, somehow, someway, in the telling, would occur to save the situation and his neck. He recalled the Arabian Nights: as long as the story-teller, Scheherazade, continued, her life was spared. But dawn was already beginning to break. He could see a pinkish light against the walls of the tent.  And recalled a line from that poem that plagued him:  An angel writing in a book of gold. Exceeding peace had made Ben Adams bold. He wished!           

“Your dream is a classic one,” he said. “It symbolizes almost everything. The great struggle here on earth between the opposing forces of good and evil.”           

“Do not give me vacuous allegory.”           

“All right. I’ll try to be more specific.”           

“The tree is life. The vines twisted around it, some dead and dying that break away under your hands, and the green, living ones that bear your weight and enable you to move forward, are the different avenues and choices of life. Some are fruitful, some are sterile. You grasp them indiscriminately in your panic to escape that which is pursuing you, seeking to devour you, which is, of course, all the dark forces rolled into one. Satan. The Devil. Evil. The child on your back, whom you love and wish to save, is yourself. Your bright, immortal soul. Your goodness. It is the prize the tiger slavers after.” Ben paused. He seldom used such words, if ever.           

Bin Laden said, “If it is as you interpret, then every person worth his salt must at some time have had a similar dream. Napoleon. Alexander the Great. Ghengis Khan. Or any average man who struggles.  Have you, Ben Adams, ever had a dream like this in your privileged, decadent life?”           

“On a minor scale. I have not fought much or struggled much.”           

“No, of course not.  You are lily-white and soft.”

Ben said nothing. The sun was warm now on the sides of the tent. General Burbrick had given him the hour of 0700 before the coalition offense began. On the assumption that operation Exceeding Peace had failed. And that he—   

“I, myself, saw all that in my dream, so you have told me nothing new. My camel boy could have told me as much. Where is this power you are reputed to have, Ben Adams? The power to change men’s hearts. I don’t see it. Am I blind? Or have you lost your power, Ben Adams?”           

“You have not asked me what would have happened if the dream continued,” Ben said.           

Bin Laden shrugged. “You have set your foot into it. I do want you to tell me. For it will determine your fate.” 

Ben sat back. That dirgeful song came to him: “Hang down your head and cry…poor boy, you’re bound to…”