have said both Owen and the transport were miracles, blessings, but wasn’t the God who doled out such blessings the very one who had caused their need for them?
Deep inside, he feared that his anger would cause God to withdraw the blessings part of the equation: the helicopter would malfunction; the hospital would be missing an essential supply or piece of equipment or physician; or worse, Tyler wouldn’t hold on long enough to receive the care he needed. That would be consistent with the God Jagger knew: to offer hope, only to snatch it away.
He let loose with a mental scream. This was the kind of thinking that would tick off the Guy Upstairs. If he couldn’t thank him for Owen and his helicopter, then it was best not to think of him at all.
Just take each thing as it comes. It’s a world of defeats and victories, of counterbalances. Things happen, they just happen.
Then Owen started praying. This gun-toting doctor with a penchant for grungy clothing and lax grooming, who racked up favors with Middle Eastern nations and had “seen worse” than Tyler’s gunshot wound, laid his hand on Tyler’s head and chest and prayed. He spoke softly, just above a whisper, but the sincerity and passion some televangelists tried to achieve through fervor and volume he evinced with a surety of words and a tone Jagger could not recall hearing before. More than anything, it spoke of relationship, a connectedness borne of time spent together, of battles won and battles lost, of pleasure and pain, grief and joy, and everything in between.
Jagger was awed by the seeming effortlessness of Owen’s faith. He had slipped into prayer without preamble or apology, without the rolling-up-the-sleeves attitude of so many believers as they approached their time with God. He had flashed the penlight into Tyler’s eyes, smiled, and said, “You’re doing great. You’re a brave young man,” then started praying, as simply as checking a pulse.
A part of Jagger wanted to give Owen a solid shove, scream at him, Don’t you know you’re wasting your time! But a more powerful part said, Yes! Do it! After all, he’d accept help for his son from anyone, anything. He tried to push away the thought that from Owen’s mouth came the words Jagger should have been saying, a heart- aching plea for Tyler’s life. He closed his eyes, clamped his teeth together.
Is that what you want from me? Are you crushing me so low that I have nowhere else to turn? Ain’t going to happen. I know how cruel you are. I know your games.
He felt a tap on his back and jumped. He turned to see the pilot holding up five fingers. Jagger patted Owen. “Five minutes!”
Owen nodded and continued to pray.
[53]
Nevaeh sat alone in the forward cabin of the Tribe’s jet, a Bombardier CL-601: six recliners as fat, soft, and white as marshmallows, arranged in two rows flanking a central aisle. The lights were dimmed to a soft glow, and the sacred music of Gioachino Rossini-at the moment, Tantum Ergo — whispered through the air. Despite enough comfort and ambience to lull a binging crackhead to sleep, she was far from relaxed. Simply being at Mt. Sinai again, the memories it conjured, would have keyed her up for hours of soul searching and memory sifting-but shooting the boy, she’d be up for days grappling with that one. An accident, yes, but she wondered if it could have been avoided. Had she jogged right instead of left to avoid the man’s aim, the boy would not have entered the bullet’s trajectory.
Like a team of “cleaners” in a hit-man movie, sweeping in to scrub a crime scene of evidence, into her troubled mind marched her twin friends Justification and Rationalization.
“The boy interfered,” said Justification, gruff as a police sergeant, sure as a judge. “That made him an accessory after the fact, equally expendable.”
“Even if he was an innocent,” said Rationalization, always in the gentle teaching tones of her long-forgotten father. “You know unfortunate casualties come with the territory. All for the greater good.”
“The greater good,” she repeated, liking the sound of it. “If I’d allowed him to steal the chip we couldn’t carry on, we couldn’t do our job.”
“Given to you by God,” Rationalization clarified.
“He was a meddler,” Justification said. “And he paid the appropriate price.”
“I don’t know that I killed him,” she said.
“All the better, if you didn’t,” intoned Rationalization. “We don’t need to be having this conversation.”
She shook her head. “He didn’t look good.”
“He should be dead,” said Justification. “He sinned when he stole from Phin. He sinned by trying to stop you.”
“You did what you had to do,” said Rationalization.
“Yes, only what I had to do.”
“Our work here is finished,” said Rationalization.
And with that the twins were gone.
Feeling better, Nevaeh spun her chair around to gaze toward the rear of the plane. Against the walls, in line with the chairs, were two floor-to-ceiling compartments, each containing two bunks. The doors were closed, and she had always thought of them as crypts, sealed off from the world, a place of rest, if only for a time. Toby and Alexa occupied the two bunks on the right. Phin lay in the other. They’d done everything they could for him, which amounted to dressing his wounds and drugging him into oblivion.
At the end of the aisle, between the compartments, a door led to a galley, a bathroom, and storage closets. She considered going back there and changing out of her invisibility suit. Instead, she rose and headed for the cockpit. Normally Elias would be piloting, but with him sent off to Trongsa-and certainly back home by now-Ben was at the controls. She slipped into the copilot seat. Outside the plane, the black Mediterranean Sea sparkled with the reflected light of a billion stars overhead.
“It’s a tomb back there,” she said without looking at Ben.
“You’re complaining?”
“Just saying. Our numbers are dwindling.” From the corner of her eye, she caught him looking at her and faced him. “Eight now, from forty.”
“It was bound to happen,” he said.
“We should talk to the ones who haven’t died, build back up to fighting numbers.”
“They’re scattered,” Ben said. “Lost causes.”
“Ben-”
“Did you put the chip in the safe?”
She wanted to talk more about rebuilding the Tribe, going after the ones they’d lost, but she knew Ben had said all he would. She sighed and unzipped a breast pocket. She reached in and pulled out the microchip container.
“I’m not so sure technology is making our task any easier,” she said, thumbing it open.
“Easier considering the size of our target. As you pointed out, we’re only eight now, can you imagine…”
She stopped hearing his words. All of her senses narrowed into the container, which held a plug of polyethylene foam and nothing more. She used a fingernail to dig out the plug, examined it, peered into the empty cylinder. She patted the outside of her breast pocket, searched inside. She looked up and saw Ben watching her.
“Are you having fun with me?” he said.
“It was in the boy’s hand,” she said. “I just assumed.”
Ben took it with the calm of a man learning that his flight would be a few minutes late. He punched buttons on the control panel, into the GPS. He said, “Remember what Phin said? He saw the chip in its container. That changed between then and when you found it. Either it fell out or the boy removed it. I’m betting on the boy.”
“You think he stashed it somewhere?” Nevaeh said. If so, and the boy was dead, they’d never find it.
“Let’s hope he had it on him,” Ben said. “Call Sebastian. Tell him we need to know where the child is now. Have him check the area hospitals and morgues. We’ll also need that helicopter again, and I want the same pilot.”
Calm as he was, Ben had a way of communicating reproach with his eyes. He hadn’t leveled condemnation at
