Chapter 9
Dream a Little Dream of Me
Two years, three months later – Lebanon
'Mr. Hawthorne.'
'Mr. Hawthorne.'
'Wake up, Mr. Hawthorne, it's time to go.'
Decker opened his eyes and looked around the room. As he twisted his body and shifted his weight to sit up, the ropes that bound his hands and feet slipped off like oversized gloves and shoes.
'It's time to go, Mr. Hawthorne,' the voice of a young boy said again.
Decker rubbed his eyes and looked toward the voice. There in the open doorway of his room stood Christopher Goodman. Now 14 years old, he had grown remarkably since Decker last saw him. 'Christopher?' Decker asked, puzzled at this obviously unexpected turn of events.
'Yes, Mr. Hawthorne,' Christopher answered.
'What are you doing here!?' Decker asked in confused disbelief.
'It's time to go Mr. Hawthorne. I've come to get you,' Christopher said, making no attempt to explain.
Christopher walked from the room and signaled for him to follow. Decker lifted the 115 pounds that remained of his body and followed Christopher out of the room and toward the front door. Halfway there, Decker hesitated. There was something he was trying to remember, something too important to forget, something he could not leave behind.
'Tom!' he said suddenly. 'Where's Tom?' he asked of the friend he had not seen since they were brought to Lebanon.
Christopher hesitated and then raised his arm slowly and pointed toward another door. Silently, Decker opened it, looking for any sign of his captors. There was none. Inside, Tom lay on a mat identical to the one Decker had now spent nearly three years sleeping on, sitting on, eating on… living on. Tom was lying with his face to the wall. Decker entered and began untying the bonds that held his friend's feet.
'Tom, wake up. We're getting out of here,' he whispered.
Tom sat up and looked at his rescuer. For a moment they just stared at each other's faces. Decker forced his eyes away and began untying Tom's hands. He had not looked in a mirror at any time during his captivity, and though he knew that his body was emaciated, he had not seen his face, where the most dramatic effects of his captivity were evident. Seeing Tom's face, he was struck with such grief and sympathy for his friend's similar condition that he had to look away to hold back tears.
Outside the apartment, Decker and Tom walked stealthily down the hall, hoping to avoid detection. Christopher, on the other hand, walked on ahead of them, showing absolutely no sign of concern about the seriousness of the situation. They went down a long stairway, cluttered with trash and broken bits of plaster and glass. Still there was no sign of their captors. As they emerged into the open air Decker closed his eyes as the bright sunlight struck him in the face with its warmth and glow.
When he opened his eyes again, he looked around at the empty room and realized that he had been dreaming. The morning sun shown in on his face through the cracks in the boarded-up window. Usually Decker dreamed of his family. When he awoke from those dreams he would close his eyes again to try to hold on for one more moment to the vestiges of the illusion. It was all he had. This dream, however, was just a curious distraction.
Decker flipped over onto his back. As he twisted his body and shifted his weight to sit up, the ropes that bound his hands and feet slipped off like oversized gloves and shoes.
He shook his head to reorient his thinking; was he still dreaming? He wasted no more time thinking about it, but quickly got to his feet. The door was unlocked, and he quietly cracked it open to look into the apartment. It looked just as it had in his dream. No one else was there. He crept toward the room which, in his dream, held his friend. Until this moment Decker had not known where Tom was, or even if he was still alive, but when he looked into the room, there was Tom.
Moments later Decker and Tom were walking down the hall and then down the same cluttered stairway. When they emerged from the building, Decker used his hand to shield his eyes in anticipation of the sunlight. None of this made any sense, but if he was dreaming this time he didn't want to wake up.
The two men moved from doorway to doorway, building to building, staying out of sight as much as possible. As they continued down the street they saw no one; it was like a ghost town. They decided to try to put as much distance between themselves and their captors as they could right away and then wait until nightfall to go on. All they knew to do was to move south toward Israel. They had no idea how far they were from the border, but with their eyes they silently pledged to each other to die rather than be recaptured. When they were a safe distance away, Decker related the strange dream of their rescue, though he did not tell Tom about Christopher's unusual origin. Later Decker regretted revealing the dream and made Tom promise not to repeat it to anyone.
For the next three nights Decker and Tom worked their way southward. As much as possible they stayed off the roads and away from any sign of population. On this night they had started early, about an hour before sundown. Decker could tell that their time was running out. Soon he and Tom would be too weak to travel. Their diet was limited to what they could catch, which meant mostly insects. On their first day they found a small wild dog which apparently had been killed by another animal, but reluctantly decided that it had been dead too long for them to eat. They regretted that decision now.
Just before dark Tom and Decker came to a well-traveled road. Waiting in a field of tall grass, they planned their crossing for after dark, hoping that traffic would be lighter and they could cross unseen.
As night fell, the traffic continued nearly unabated, though there were occasional gaps of several minutes between passing vehicles. Slowly, they approached the road, stopping short about fifty yards. The road was straight and flat and they could see several miles in each direction. A series of trucks passed, then there appeared to be a break. The nearest vehicles were coming from the east, about three miles off.
Decker and Tom moved quickly. As they reached the small rise on which the road was built, it seemed they would have no trouble getting across. Then, unexpectedly, halfway up the rise, Decker felt a tug at his leg. Looking down, he saw that he had caught his pant leg on some barbed wire fencing. He tried to pull free but the barbs dug into his leg and he fell, catching his other leg in the same tangled mass.
Tom had already stepped into the road when he heard Decker call out. He hurried back to help free him, but as the seconds passed they were forced to reassess the situation. The next group of vehicles was getting too close. Their only option seemed to be to lie as flat and still as they could and hope that the slight rise of the road would hide them from the direct beams of the passing vehicles.
Tom lay on his stomach next to Decker and held his breath. The vehicles inched closer, moving much slower than Decker had first thought. As the first truck passed, Tom moved suddenly. Before Decker could stop him, he was running into the road shouting and waving his arms. It's over, Decker thought.
The next truck stopped a few yards from Tom. From the back of the truck came men in uniforms, carrying rifles. They surrounded Tom, with their rifles pointing at him. Another group encircled Decker, who was still on the ground. Slowly Decker rolled to his back and looked up at the men. Each man wore a light blue helmet with an emblem of fig leaves surrounding a globe. The same emblem, which Tom had seen on the first truck, was emblazoned on the flags which flew from the antennas and was painted on the door of each of the vehicles. Decker recognized it. They were from UNIFIL, the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Lebanon.
That night Tom and Decker showered, were given clean clothes, and slept in real beds. Their stomachs could not handle much food, but before they fell asleep in the quarters of the U.N. compound, they each had two pieces of bread and a half cup of beef stew.
The next morning Tom and Decker were invited to share breakfast with the Swedish U.N. commander. 'I read the report of the team that picked you up last night,' the commander said as they walked across the compound to the mess hall. 'That convoy you stopped had a very special guest on it. That's why the men responded as they did – they thought you might be Hizballah. That group of crazies would love to get their hands on somebody like Ambassador Hansen.'
At breakfast Tom and Decker met the commander's special guest, the British Ambassador to the U.N., Jon
