Tears of Abraham

CHAPTER FIFTEEN Second Chances

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

Jack Stryker was a patient man, and right now he was intrigued more than annoyed by the fact that his quarry had eluded him again. He watched the video feeds from his new command post.

The images from the drones were black and white, and poor quality, but the video the news crew had uploaded was in living color.

The best drone feed came from a Reaper he’d tasked to the town. He’d gotten that directive from one of the Mr. Smiths. He watched it in slow motion again.

The news van locked on in red, a box around the target. A flash, which looked white to the camera. Targets fleeing into a crowd. The people get closer, as the Reaper descends, the camera zooming in to track two men, red boxes around them as they move through the crowd. Separating. Heading toward a store.

Stryker switched to a different view, this one from one of the helicopters he’d ordered into the town.

Tracers tearing apart the buildings, return fire coming from multiple locations. The original targets lost.

He’d requested more assets, but was denied.

The strike team gets cut down, then the feed goes dead. Damn jets.

Stryker watched the video the doomed news team had uploaded for the world to see, zoomed in on the faces of the men he had been ordered to hunt down and kill. The men appeared exhausted, frayed, yet determined. Emerging from a burning building carrying kids. Dangerous men because he did not fully understand them. He knew one of them personally, and now knew all of them intimately, from their deepest fears to their hopes and dreams to what searches they’d performed on the Internet. He could not wrap his head around what they’d done. Taking a calculated risk, with some benefit, that he could grasp. Simply rushing headlong into death for no reason other than to save some kid or fat housewife with no hope of gain? No. That did not compute. He knew people like that were everywhere; he felt uncomfortable because no matter how hard he tried, he grasped he would never understand them.

He had narrowed down their destination to several choices. He was patient. They had escaped, but he would complete his mission.

Jack Stryker switched to a live feed from Key West and toggled the comm. This image was in color. A pretty blonde woman picking fruit in a bathing suit. Henry Wilkins has done well for himself. I might enjoy a taste of that fruit myself.

“Status?” he said.

“Quiet. No change,” came the reply.

“Copy that,” he said, sighing.

Stryker was a realist. He knew his own life was forfeit once he’d done the Directors’ dirty work. He had an insurance policy they did not know about, however, in the legal pad he’d taken from the man he’d assassinated, Reince Blackaby, and Stryker was pondering how best to go about utilizing this. He was a sociopath, but he had no intention of dying.

I’m a pawn, a cog in the wheel. What gets men in this line of work dead is when they think they’re something more than that. Men like that Blackaby fool. They overestimate their value, and wind up shot in the back of the head. Not Iceman, though. Not Jack Frost. I’m going to see this through, and if I play my cards right, I end up with my own island. If I overplay my hand, well, I’m dead. God, I love it.

He realized he was grinning, not faking it in the way he’d grown accustomed, a genuine smile. His grin got bigger. Wilkins is going to come for her for sure. Divorce papers or no divorce papers. A peach like that and a Boy Scout like Wilkins? He’ll come.

BELLEVUE, TENNESSEE

Jessie was tired of Nashville. He was hungry, thirsty, and surrounded by a bunch of Mexicans who refused to shut the hell up. Them with their generator and heaters and cooking food on the propane grill every night, just to show Jessie how much they had and how they were better than him. He had to go somewhere.

He’d waited long enough. Hung over, and out of beer and things to trade for more beer, he clutched his daddy’s shotgun and stuck it in the gun rack of his truck along with an army bag he’d gotten from a surplus store, a sleeping bag, and some ripe clothing.

Everything smelled like shit. Without running water, the toilet was an open sewer. He’d cut a hole through the floor of his trailer and used that, and then the smell from underneath got to be bad. He couldn’t take it anymore.

He took back roads getting to the west side of town, with a vague notion that he’d wind up somewhere in Kentucky, maybe head up toward Cadiz where he knew a guy from the bar had a little boat on a lake. They weren’t friends, but they’d told some jokes together. He tried to remember the man’s name, but he couldn’t, then dismissed it. If the guy wouldn’t let him stay there, there’d be somebody else who would, one way or another.

He cut through yards and sidewalks to get around vehicles that were burned, out of gas, or simply abandoned on the road. He’d gotten used to that. He stopped to siphon gas from a few, and came up empty.

His hands were trembling at the worn steering wheel while he waited in an endless line of traffic before the checkpoint. He’d been stuck in this line for hours.

Damn government. They want to control everything. I hate them. I hate all of them. I hate these niggers in front of me and behind me and all around me. I hate these Mexicans looking at me. I hate Big Brother and the news and the banks and Christians and Jews and Muslims and damn it I need a beer and a cigarette or somebody is going to die.

His mind was caught in a loop, a well-worn tape of all the injustices inflicted upon him by the world. No part of this inner diatribe of vitriol included any acceptance of responsibility, for in his black heart, he was a victim of circumstance. Life had dealt him a shitty hand, and he was sick and tired of acting like that was all right with him. There’s only so much a man can take.

The line of cars and trucks inched ahead, and the red brake lights, streaked by the rain, dimmed, and Jessie, who wished fervently to be Marshall, hit the gas a bit harder than he’d intended to, and the car in front of him did not move forward as fast as he thought it should, and he smacked right into the rear bumper of that car. He twitched and swore, as the van behind him rear-ended him.

He looked over his shoulder. The guy was shaking his head at Jessie, hands on the wheel, looking angry, like he wanted to start something. The guy’s dark face was shadowy and red through the muddy window.

You hit me, you motherfucker. Here we go. I’m tired of laying down for it. You run into me and then act like it’s my fault? You disrespect me? I ain’t getting pushed no more. I ain’t getting hit again and not hitting back. And now you’re hollering out the window at me? Watch this. I’ve got something for you.

Hands shaking, eyes bloodshot and bleary, stinking of his own feces and hate, Jessie got out of the truck with his daddy’s shotgun in his hands. The rain was cold, and he felt it spitting in his face.

The gun felt good in his hands, made him feel strong. I could have gone pro. Shake and bake, motherfucker. You’re about to meet Marshall.

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

She’d begged him not to go, and Leon listened because he loved his wife and because he didn’t have a good plan anyway. She was conservative, sensible, and she demanded explanations of him, wanted answers he did not have. So he’d waited. The violence in the complex got worse. They ran out of water and food, until she figured out she could trade her medical services for it. She treated gunshot wounds and infections, and the community rallied around her and them, and for a while it was all right, and Leon was glad he’d listened to her. Maybe they could make it and things would get better and the war would end. He was proud of her, proud of his boys. They did not complain much, did not sulk or cry.

At night they told stories and sang songs, sometimes with other folks from the neighborhood. People helped each other out. They prayed a lot, and read from the Bible, and there was a kind of drawing together that made Leon smile. There were Asians sitting next to Haitians belting out hymns in a makeshift church that used to be an office, and sometimes the songs were in Spanish, sometimes in English or French or Korean. They were the same songs, and the language did not matter, for the people understood, the people felt the meaning and power and truth beneath the melody and lyric, and the chorus of “How Great Is Our God” or “Amazing Grace” would swell from the dark, candle-lit room sung in five languages at the same time, everyone understanding each other.

It was beautiful, hopeful, transcendent. When the voices lifted up to heaven, Leon would get chills on his arms and tears in his eyes, belting it out himself, and there was an energy in the air that connected each person in the room until Leon believed for the first time in God. For the connection went beyond mere camaraderie. What unified them went beyond energy, science, or understanding, for it was too vast and powerful and perfect to be defined or explained in those terms. While Leon was no stranger to the church, growing up Baptist and knowing the hymns from the time he could walk, this was something new to him. He yearned to sing.

As resources dwindled, the violence worsened. People killed people for canned soup and dog food and powdered baby formula. Within a short time, Leon lost his voice. He grew angry again.

They’d waited too long, hoping for deliverance and the hand of God, he told her. It’s time. She finally agreed, and they loaded the van with everything they could. The boys were ready for an adventure.

BELLEVUE, TENNESSEE

When Leon hit the truck in front of him, he was annoyed. The guy hadn’t been paying attention. The airbags hadn’t gone off, though, and no one was hurt. It looked like the old truck hit the car in front of it, and Leon hoped whoever was in that car would be okay.

Leon rolled down his window and put up his hands, in the universal I’m sorry gesture, and shouted, “My bad, man! You okay?”

The door to the truck opened, and out sprang a bearded hillbilly with a shotgun. His face was twisted and washed out with the headlights and rain, and there was murder in it.

Leon reached to his holster as the man stepped forward.

“Get down!” Leon shouted to his wife.

Leon opened the door fast, shoving it and pulling the handle at the same time. The windshield shattered, spraying glass on his face, and he felt something hot and wet on his cheeks. His wife screamed, and there was the boom of the shot with the sound of terror from his children and this redneck swearing at the top of his lungs.

Leon dropped to the wet pavement, extending his hands and weapon in front of him. Another shot, this one at the door, and then Leon couldn’t see out of one eye. His face was on fire, sticky and burning, and he was having a hard time seeing out of his good eye.

He fired, aiming for a boot. He missed. Damn. Five feet away. How’d I miss? Or maybe I didn’t. Oh God. My kids. My wife. Oh Lord. He couldn’t move fast enough. Things were happening in slow motion and fast-forward at the same time, like a nightmare. The ones where his weapon ran out of bullets and the bad guys were always faster. The pavement was wet and cold against his cheek and he felt the scrape and sting, and the road seemed to shimmer, wet and red and mean.

The feet were on him then, and the barrel of the shotgun was swinging at his head. Leon fired again, in twisting, desperate agony. His nightmare continued, and he was aware of many things all at once and too late, which is the way of bad dreams and life.

He could hear his boys crying. He thought about how he’d let them down, how he should have been able to protect them and give them a better life than he had, and he wished he could do things over again.

He wanted to sing with his soul to them, to compress his love and hope for them into an instant so they would know. So maybe when they were older, they’d understand. They could open it up like a box and see him, hear him, even though he wasn’t there anymore.

His voice was gone, and there was no more pain, yet still he sang into the night and far beyond, soaring with a multitude and it was joy eternal.