Blessed Child, Page 3

  “Yes, of course. And we could drive off a cliff as well. That would throw a surprise their way. At least on the road we have a chance of staying on all fours. Maybe the engine’s just adjusting.”

  As if to respond, the Jeep lurched once before regaining its full speed.

  “That feel like an adjustment to you? I may not be as well informed about the arts of survival as you, but I have learned a thing or two about Jeeps in my two years here. That was more like a death rattle than a midcourse tune-up.”

  “And in the three years I’ve lived in this country, I’ve learned a few things as well. One is that this trail to Biset you suggest we take was made for camels, not Jeeps. It’s impassable.”

  She had a point.

  The car suddenly jerked three times in succession. He snatched a quick look to the rear and saw that Leiah had turned as well. The Land Rover had gained. The boy stared at him round-eyed.

  That was it. Jason gripped the wheel tight. The turn off was not much more than a break in the rock to their right, around the next bend.

  “Hold on. Just hold on tight.”

  “You’ll kill us,” Leiah said.

  “Hold the boy.”

  He was counting on the dust to obscure their exit; the more he churned up the better. They were doing forty miles per hour by the speedometer when the sandstone to their right gaped. Jason jerked the wheel without easing off the accelerator. The Jeep bounced over a shallow ditch and snorted into what looked like a sandy river bottom.

  Rocks the size of coconuts populated the wash. A thin trail snaked through the center. Leiah’s camel trail. Jason swung the wheel from side to side in an attempt to dodge the rocks, but there were too many. The front left wheel slammed into a large rock, sending the Jeep rearing up at an odd angle. Jason’s knees smashed into the steering wheel and he winced. He caught a brief glimpse of Leiah, suspended behind him. They crashed to the ground and shot forward. How Leiah managed to stay in the Jeep was beyond Jason. Then again, if anyone could, it would be someone with her determination. And she did it holding the boy.

  “Hold on!”

  The engine was faltering badly now. They lurched over the sand, avoiding the rocks and peeling around an embankment that rose to their left. Here the path was still wide enough to allow the Jeep’s passage, but Jason knew that Leiah was right: the path narrowed to a goat trail within two miles.

  But he had no intention of going two miles. Or even one mile. If he could get the Jeep into one of the canyons gaping to their right and shut it down out of sight, they might escape detection.

  He angled the vehicle for the second canyon and glanced back. No sign of the Land Rover yet. “Keep down.”

  “You’re going to kill us.”

  “Just keep your pretty head down!”

  They entered the canyon without being seen—that much Jason was sure of—and the relief that washed over his neck felt sweeter than any he could remember. He nursed the sputtering vehicle along the canyon floor. Sheer cliffs rose on either side thirty yards each way. And then directly ahead as well. It was a box canyon—not his first choice, but with any luck he had already saved their skins.

  He drove the Jeep into the canyon’s long shadows and pulled behind several round boulders at the end. He turned off the ignition and let the engine die.

  Jason pulled himself up by the roll bar and peered back toward the opening, three hundred yards off. Nothing. A low wind moaned through the canyon, but it was the pounding of his own heart that filled his ears. He held his breath and strained for the rumble of an engine.

  Still nothing.

  Jason blew out a lungful of air and looked down at the pair in the rear seat. His right hand rested on the roll bar, shaking badly.

  “You hear anything?”

  The nurse looked at him without responding. It was the first time he saw her without an impending threat looming over them. Her complexion was dark, but clearly European. Her nose was sharp and her eyes very blue. But he saw something else now, on her neck, at the fray of her navy tunic. Her skin at the base of her throat was badly scarred. Burn scars that disappeared beneath her wrap.

  He shifted his eyes to meet hers. She knew that he had seen. Her eyes said so, and she held her posture in near defiance.

  “Do you hear anything?” he asked.

  She held his eyes for a moment longer and then pulled herself up into a clear line with the canyon’s opening. She held onto the bar beside him, and he saw that her arms, though covered with the flowing tunic, were also scarred.

  “No,” she said.

  Caleb climbed slowly out of the back seat and dropped to the sand. He stood on trembling legs and looked at the Jeep in awe. The sight made Jason think of a lost puppy. In all of the commotion, Jason had nearly forgotten about the boy. And yet it was because of him that they found themselves in this predicament. Because of one ten-year-old boy who had been abandoned at the monastery as a baby and raised in total isolation from the rest of the world. And because the priest who had adopted him had gone to great lengths to see that he lived.

  It occurred to Jason that the boy’s shaking knees were the result of the wild ride aboard this metal monster beside him—not the threat of armed soldiers’ pursuit. He probably wouldn’t know the threat of a gun if one were to go off in his hands.

  They remained still like that for long seconds. Jason listened intently, holding his breath periodically. A lammergeyer cawed high above, and Jason lifted his eyes to the canyon lip. The huge vulturelike bird of prey circled lazily against the dimming sky. A cackle sounded across the canyon. A troop of several dozen gelada baboons peered curiously down on this invasion into their world.

  But these were sights and sounds as common as the grass in northern Ethiopia.

  “That’s what I call a close call,” Jason said, hopping over the door to the ground. Leiah did not follow. She had her head tilted, still listening determinedly. Jason stilled.

  He heard it then: a faint rumble on the wind. The boy turned to face the canyon’s mouth—he’d heard it as well.

  Jason’s heart spiked.

  Leiah suddenly crouched. “They’ve doubled back!” she whispered near panic. “They’re coming!”

  The Land Rover’s engine now rumbled clearly. In horror Jason watched the truck crawl into the canyon’s mouth and then turn directly for them. It rocked its way steadily over the wash, closing the three-hundred-yard gap.

  He pulled his head down out of sight and flattened his back to the rock they’d pulled behind. The Land Rover had obviously doubled back and followed the tracks after noting their vanishing act.

  They were sitting ducks!

  Leiah grabbed the boy and pulled him down to the sand. He uttered a startled cry and Leiah quieted him with her hand. She spun to Jason with wide eyes.

  High above, the baboons were starting to cackle loudly, as if they sensed an impending showdown. Jason could hardly think, much less act. They were a nurse, a child, and a man, cornered in a box canyon, facing trained killers who had just come from butchering a gathering of innocent priests. Heavily armed soldiers against . . .

  One gun.

  The rifle!

  Jason scrambled for the Jeep and dove for the rifle on the floorboards. Thank the stars it hadn’t flown out. He snatched it out and then fumbled with the glove box. A box of .30-06 shells tumbled out.

  Working frantically, he pulled the bolt action back and rammed shells into the ten-round clip. He dropped a round in the sand and left it, thinking he would use it last if need be. The nurse and the boy were staring at his performance, wide-eyed.

  “You think you’ll accomplish something with one gun?” Leiah whispered.

  “Keep down,” he ordered. He flattened himself on the sand and crawled to the edge of the rock. The truck rolled forward, no more than a hundred meters off now. If he could get a round into its fuel tank, they might have a chance.

  Jason pressed his cheek against the butt of the .30-06 and lined it up wit
h the Land Rover. But his breathing wagged the sights in crazy circles, and he pulled away to take a deep breath.

  The vehicle suddenly veered to the left and pulled behind a group of large boulders, seventy-five meters from them. They had been seen!

  Jason blinked at the sting of sweat in the corners of his eyes. He lay immobilized. The Land Rover’s cab poked out from the boulders, and he watched three men dressed in green military garb drop to the ground and duck behind the rocks. Within seconds the madness began: a staccato burst of machine-gun fire erupted from their position, thundering between the canyon walls. Slugs smacked the rock; ricochets pinged by.

  For the second time that day Jason came face-to-face with the simple knowledge that he was going to die. The realization chilled his flesh like a bucket of ice water poured over his head. He had a gun in his hands, but including the round he’d dropped in the sand behind him, he had fewer bullets than were contained in the single burst that had ripped over their heads just now.

  Jason pointed the gun in their general direction and pulled the trigger. It bucked and boomed loudly.

  The machine guns fell silent. The baboons on the cliff above screeched in protest. Jason grabbed the rifle’s bolt and chambered another round. Surprise, surprise! You’re not the only one with firepower!

  As if in response, the air filled with a cacophony of weapons fire and none of it from Jason. The shells came like a stream of lead, thumping and whining on all sides.

  Panicked, Jason fired the .30-06 as fast as he could work the bolt action, hardly thinking the maneuver through. It was only when a small remaining thread of reason whispered that he must be down to only one or two rounds that he stopped.

  He was hardly aware of Leiah and the boy beside him. He glanced their way and saw to his surprise that the boy had crawled over to a gap in the boulders for a clear view of the Land Rover. Neither he nor Leiah appeared to be hit. And as far as he knew, he wasn’t either, but his mind wasn’t working so quickly just now.

  The machine-gun fire cut off abruptly, and he edged his head around the rock for a look. So now he had one, maybe two, rounds left in the rifle, and one in the sand behind him. Three shots. Facing three men armed with machine guns. Three killers trained to . . .

  A figure suddenly broke from the rocks and ran crouched toward another pile of boulders across the canyon. Two thoughts blasted through Jason’s mind with surprising clarity. The first was that from the soldier’s new position, they would be wide open. This was not good. The second thought was that he had not chambered a round.

  Jason flew into action, snatching the bolt back and chambering a round. He held his breath and aimed the wavering sights with as much care as he could extract from his taut muscles. He pulled the trigger.

  If the slug came remotely close, the man did not show it. He ran on, only a few strides away from the boulders now.

  Jason chambered and fired again in one desperate motion.

  The soldier grunted and dove to the ground three yards from the rocks. Only it wasn’t a dive; it was more of a flop. Jason moved the rifle for a clear view.

  The man lay unmoving, facedown in the sand. The canyon lay still in the tall shadows. No one moved. All eyes seemed to have been arrested by this one impossible development. Even the baboons had fallen silent.

  Jason’s breath blasted into the white sand two inches from his mouth; sweat trickled down his cheeks. He had shot the man. The lammergeyer cawed high above, but down here a surreal silence had settled.

  A soft whimpering sound floated through the air. Not from the figure lying facedown forty meters out, but from Jason’s left. He turned his head.

  What followed seemed to proceed in slow motion, in a distant place beyond Jason’s control. Caleb was standing. And then he was walking forward.

  Leiah reached out for him, and Jason saw her mouth open, even heard her cry of protest, but even that sounded muted. Maybe it was the deafening of the rounds he’d fired; or the deadening realization that he was down to one round, buried in the sand behind him; or maybe the certainty of their death. But whatever the reason, Jason’s senses were shutting down.

  The boy was suddenly running across the open sand, straight for the fallen man.

  Jason dropped the rifle and shoved himself to his knees, waiting for the reports of weapons fire. But none came. Perhaps because the two remaining soldiers were as stunned as he over the development.

  Caleb ran silently, with his tan tunic fluttering in the breeze. His wavy hair flew behind him. Leiah left the rock and jumped out into the open, as if she intended to follow. The soldiers could have shot her as well as the boy, but they held their fire.

  Caleb reached the fallen man and dropped to his knees with his back to Jason. He whimpered again and then bent over the man in silence. The circling lammergeyer stopped its cawing. The valley stilled completely.

  “What’s he doing?” Jason heard himself whisper. “What’s he doing?”

  Leiah didn’t respond. She took a single step forward and then stopped.

  For what seemed like long minutes, but could have only been ten or fifteen seconds, they remained fixed, watching the boy knelt over the man, like a priest administering last rites.

  A thought skipped through Jason’s mind: the thought that the .30-06’s chamber was empty. The thought that he should be thinking things through instead of staring out dumbly.

  The boy stood, turned his back on the fallen man, and began to walk calmly back to them. Still the soldiers did not fire on him—perhaps because he was a child. A hot gust blew across the sand, whipping the boy’s tunic about his ankles.

  Leiah called out in a weak, desperate voice. “Fetan, fetan!” Hurry, hurry!

  But the boy did not hurry.

  A cough suddenly echoed through the canyon. Another. Behind the boy, the fallen man moved on the sand.

  Jason’s heart bolted in his chest. He instinctively jerked the bolt on the rifle, but there were no rounds to chamber. Behind him! The last round was behind him.

  Beyond Caleb’s shimmering figure the fallen soldier sat up and Jason froze.

  Leiah ran out a few steps and stretched her hand to the boy. “Caleb! Caleb, fetan!”

  The man suddenly scrambled to his feet in a defensive posture, like a wrestler facing his opponent. In this case the boy, now thirty feet from him and walking steadily but unhurriedly away. The soldier felt his chest as if rubbing a bruise and then spun around in search of his rifle. He snatched it up and stared after the boy. He patted his chest one last time and then ran for the Land Rover, yelling words in a foreign tongue.

  Still expressionless, Caleb turned back when the man began his yelling. The nurse rushed out, lifted the boy around his chest, and rushed back to the cover.

  Jason watched in stunned disbelief as the soldiers piled into the Land Rover. The truck snorted to life and spewed dust through a sweeping turn. Within seconds it disappeared from the canyon in a hasty retreat.

  Jason became aware that his jaw lay open, and he closed it. Grit ground between his teeth and he attempted to spit it out, but his mouth had dried. He staggered to his feet. Caleb was looking after the Land Rover. Leiah had her hand on the boy’s head. Tears marked trails down her dusty face.

  They remained unmoving for what seemed a long time, staring down the canyon. Whatever had just happened, Jason’s mind was not understanding it so clearly. They were alive, and that was good. That was incredible.

  “Let’s go,” he finally said.

  “Are they gone?” Leiah asked.

  “For now. But they’ll be back.” He turned to the Jeep. “I guarantee you they’ll be back.”

  3

  HE OBVIOUSLY WASN’T HIT,” Jason said.

  Leiah sat in the front passenger seat and glanced back at Caleb’s frail, bouncing figure staring off at the sharp, angular landscape. The boy hadn’t offered any explanation, at least none that she or Jason could understand. He’d rattled off a string of words in Ge’ez, the language
preferred by most Ethiopian Orthodox priests, but they meant nothing to her. She wasn’t even sure if the boy spoke English, although it wouldn’t surprise her. If the priests had taught him Amharic and Ge’ez, they’d likely exposed him to English as well.

  She looked back at the American. “What? The bullet just frightened the soldier and he fainted?”

  “No. But it obviously didn’t cause any damage. Dead men don’t run back to their trucks and drive off.”

  “And neither do soldiers who have the enemy pinned down.”

  He looked at her with a raised eyebrow—a don’t-be-smart look. “You always mock men who save your neck?” His eyes were nearly as blue as her own. He could be of Scandinavian descent with the blond hair.

  “Save my neck? You mean like you did with that peashooter of yours? Forgive me, I’d nearly forgotten.”

  “You’re alive, aren’t you? Last time I looked, the monastery was pretty much leveled. You may not be thrilled with this ride, but like it or not, it’s saved your neck.”

  He’s right, Leiah. This man saved your life. “You’re right. It hasn’t been an easy day.”

  Jason stared ahead without responding. They would head straight for Addis Ababa, he’d said, an eight-hour journey on these roads. From there they would see.

  She watched the muscles on his arm flex as he gripped the wheel. It took a strong man to live in this country, and he’d done it for two years, he’d said. He wore blue jeans and a well-worn khaki shirt rolled at the sleeves, both layered with dust—typical American.

  “Maybe the soldier was wearing a vest of some kind,” she said. “Or you hit his belt or something. Enough to knock him out without hurting him.”

  Jason nodded. “Makes sense.” He shook his head. “What doesn’t make sense is why they haven’t picked up the chase again. But they’re coming. There’s no way they chased us this far if they had any intention of letting us go. Something’s not adding up.”

  “And why do you suppose they took off in the first place?”

  “They fled because they were terrified by my carefully placed shots, that’s why,” he said, grinning. “Either way they did. For now anyway.”