CHAPTER 21
“I have been going too fast!”
Buck was startled awake. Had Abdullah said something? “I’m sorry?” he shouted.
“I have been going too fast!”
Had he been pulled over by the air police, or what? “We’re ahead of schedule then?”
“Yes, but I burned more fuel than I planned, and we need to refuel in New York.”
Buck just wanted to get home. “Where are you going to put down? New York was last on Carpathia’s refurbishing list. Still blaming the U.S. for the rebellion, I guess.”
“I know a place. You will be in Wheeling in two hours.”
Buck checked his watch. It was seven in the Midwest. If they were on the ground by nine, he could be to the safe house before ten. There would be no more sleeping.
Rayford sat with Chloe, who looked pale, her lips bluish. This was getting ridiculous. He had the feeling the baby would be born in that house tonight, and he was going to do everything he could to be sure it had every chance.
“All right, sweetie?”
“Just exhausted, Dad.” She seemed to keep shifting so she could breathe better. He knew she was unaware of how serious that was. When his phone rang, he flipped it open so quickly he dropped it.
“Sorry,” he said, picking it up. “Steele here.”
“Ray, it’s Doc. We switched the oxygen to T’s red Jeep, and I’m on my way. How’s our girl?”
“Yes.”
“You’re right there with her?”
“Correct.”
“On a scale of one to ten, one being the worst, how do you rate her?”
“Five.”
“I’d ask for another fetal pulse, but there’s nothing I can do until I get there anyway.”
Rayford stood and turned his back to Chloe, moseying to look out the window. Hattie was outside, talking animatedly on her phone. “What’s happening with T?” he asked.
“I think Biker took the bait, but he’s going to recognize his old boss right away. We just hope he’ll stop and talk to Hattie anyway.”
“I’m only guessing, Doc, but I think he’s doing that now. Please hurry.”
“What’s going on, Daddy?” Chloe asked.
“Doc got hung up at the hospital and had to run an errand on the way back. He’s coming with the oxygen.”
“Good. And he thought it could wait until tomorrow.”
“He was only hoping.”
“My baby’s going to be all right, isn’t it?”
“If you keep breathing deeply until the O2 gets here,” Rayford said, eager to talk to Hattie. “I’m going to get some air.”
“Get me some,” she said, smiling weakly.
“Just do it, Ernie,” Hattie was saying, her back to Rayford as he stepped out. “Prove you’re a man, and I mean it.” She heard the door and slapped her phone shut.
“Cooled his jets,” she said.
“Yeah? How?”
“Just told him the situation and that it was stupid of me to ask him to try to get here. I told him maybe you’d take me to Palwaukee one of these days if I take care of myself.”
“Maybe. What’s he going to do now?”
“Go home, I guess.”
“He lives at the airport.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“He got bit the same day you did. How’s he feeling?”
“Pretty weak, I guess, but he said it was fun to get out riding again.”
Rayford’s phone rang. “Excuse me, Hattie,” he said, but she didn’t move. “Am I going inside?” he added. “Or are you?”
“Well, excuse me!” she said and left.
“Steele.”
“It’s T. Ol’ Ernie turned three colors when he caught up and found out I was driving. He started to scoot away, but I said, ‘Your girlfriend’s on the phone.’ He took it and the first thing he said was, ‘No, it isn’t.’ I’m sure I didn’t sound like Doc Charles, and she probably asked him if that’s who I was. Then she really must have been reading him the riot act because all he did was apologize and say yes a dozen times.”
“She claims she told him to back off and that she’d see him again some other time.”
“Doc’s long gone, so Ernie’s out of options anyway. He headed back to Palwaukee. At least he said he did.”
“You busy tonight, T?”
“I let everybody else go home, and I was going to handle Buck’s arrival. We took a message out of New York that they’ve refueled and should be here by nine. You know they’re in a Z-two-nine?”
“The Egyptian fighter? You’re kidding.”
“That’s what it says. He could make it from New York in an hour if he had to. Anyway, what do you need?”
“Keep an eye on Ernie. I don’t trust him or Hattie.”
“What can he do? He doesn’t know where you are.”
“He might follow me when I pick up Buck. Who knows?”
“If he’s around when Buck gets in, I won’t let him out of my sight. Fair enough?”
Buck was claustrophobic by the time Abdullah streaked over Ohio airspace, but his discomfort was covered by excitement. Seeing Chloe was his end-all goal. Whatever was wrong with the pregnancy was out of his hands. All he could do was pray and get there. They could get through anything together. The next few years weren’t going to be easy regardless.
He reached forward and gripped Abdullah’s shoulders. “Thanks for the ride, friend!”
“Thanks for the job, sir! Tell Mr. McCullum what a nice ride you had.”
Buck laughed but didn’t let Abdullah hear him. He would never again use a fighter as a passenger plane, but he was grateful for the lift home. “Everything all right? On course, on schedule, got all our fluids?”
“OK, Mr. Williams. I will need a place to sleep.”
“I believe there are accommodations at the airport. I’d invite you to our place, but we’re in hiding and crowded as it is.”
“I need very little,” Abdullah said. “Just a place to sleep and a place to plug in.”
“Your computer?”
“Ben-Judah.”
Buck nodded. What more needed to be said?
Rayford was never happier to see a vehicle chug past the north side of the house. He ran out to help Floyd lug the oxygen tanks. “I’ve got these, Doc. Go check on her.”
“Leave the other one in the car for now. She needs O2 more than she needs anything else.”
Rayford was only half a minute behind Doc, but by the time he hefted the tank close enough, Floyd had the fetal monitor on Chloe and looked grave. Tsion stood watching from the bottom of the stairs. Hattie was in the opposite corner looking warily from the top of the basement stairs.
Chloe looked worse than she had just minutes before. Doc swore. “Forgive me,” he said. “I’m working on that.”
“What’s wrong?” Chloe said, gasping.
“OK,” Floyd said, “listen up, starting with the patient. We’re all going to have to work together here. I need as clean an environment as I can get. Hattie, if you could start a big pot of—”
But Hattie looked as if she wasn’t listening. Her eyes were glazed, and she appeared shocked. She turned shakily and began making her way down the stairs to her basement room.
“I’ll do whatever you need done,” Tsion said, rolling up his sleeves and hurrying over.
“Am I having this baby tonight?” Chloe said desperately. “Before Buck gets here?”
“Not if I can help it,” Doc said. “But your job is to be quiet. Don’t talk unless you have to.”
“All right,” she said quickly, “but I have to know everything right now, and I mean it.”
Doc looked to Rayford, who raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Just tell her.”
“All right, Ray. Get the O2 on her. Chloe, there has been a significant decrease in the fetal pulse. I don’t have the equipment to check on the position of the cord, and I don’t want to do a C-section here anyway. A ride to Young Memorial would not be medically positive.”
Chloe pulled the oxygen mask from her mouth, though it had already made her face look pinker. “Medically positive?” she said. “You’re not gonna keep me quiet with foggy language. You mean the ride might kill me?”
“That’s a moot question. You’re not going. Now be quiet. Tsion, just give me what I ask for when I ask. Keep your hands clean. Ray, you stay washed up too. Bring me those two chairs and pull those two lights over. Put that one atop the table. Give me that bottle of Betadine.”
Once the room was set up and lit as brightly as possible, it took all three men to carefully lift Chloe into position on the makeshift delivery table. “So much for dignity,” she said from behind the mask.
“Shut up,” Floyd said, but he playfully pinched her toe.
“I must ask a question,” Tsion said from the stove. “How will you decide whether an emergency cesarean is necessary?”
“Only if the baby’s heart slows too much or stops. Then we’ll have to do what we have to do. Chloe will be pretty much out of it by then, so she’ll have to make that call now. You’ll be anesthetized, Chloe, but not to the degree I’d like for a cesarean. Now—”
“Not even a question,” she said, despite the mask. “Go for the baby and worry about me later.”
“But if—”
“Don’t even argue with me about this, Doc.”
“All right, but all this stuff is just precautionary. I’d like to not have to induce. We may not have that luxury, but I’ll hold off as long as I can, hoping the baby will stabilize.”
“Just try to wait for Buck,” Chloe said.
“Not another word,” Doc said.
“Sorry, Floyd,” she mumbled.
Rayford looked at his watch. “What happens when I have to leave to get Buck?”
“Frankly, I could use you. Buck’s car is still at the airport. He can drive himself.”
“That leaves T without a car.”
“He can ride along and pick up his car here.”
“T doesn’t want to know the way. Makes it easier on him if he ever gets questioned.”
“But you trust him,” Doc said.
“Implicitly.”
“It’s a risk he has to take.”
Abdullah crossed into Illinois a few minutes before nine, and Buck called Rayford. “So I’m to bring T with me?”
“And make sure you’re not followed. It’s a long story.”
“We always watch for tails. Someone specific?”
“T will tell you. It’s a guy who lives right there at the airport.”
“Abdullah is staying there. I’ll assign him guard duty.”
“Abdullah! You’re flying with Abdullah Smith?”
“I didn’t know you knew him.”
“Put him on!”
Buck tapped Abdullah on the shoulder. “My father-in-law wants to talk to you. Rayford Steele.”
Abdullah turned almost all the way around in his seat. “Rayford? Are you serious?”
Rayford quickly filled Abdullah in on the situation. “I’ll make sure he goes nowhere,” the pilot said. “You know I can manage.”
“How well I know. What’s your ETA?”
“Fourteen minutes, but I’m shooting for eleven.”
Rayford clapped his phone shut and said he was going to check on Hattie. He got three steps down and bent to see her in a fetal position on an old couch. He shook his head and went back upstairs.
“How’re we doing, Doc?”
“We’re going to induce, but I can start her slow and give Buck plenty of time. Everybody OK with that? Fetal pulse is not critical yet, but it will be in an hour. I’d start the drip if it was my call.”
Chloe pointed at Floyd.
“That means it’s your call, Doc,” Rayford said.
“Small airport,” Abdullah said as they descended.
“Not too small for you, though, right?”
“I could land on an envelope and not cancel the stamp.”
Buck knew it was nervous tension, but he didn’t stop laughing until he climbed out. He stretched so far he dizzied himself and thought he would break in two. He told Abdullah, “The guy on the radio was T, the one we’re supposed to meet. He’ll point you to where you’re staying and hopefully introduce you to Ernie. You know what to do.”
Abdullah smiled.
Fewer than ten minutes later, Abdullah was unpacking next to Ernie’s room. Buck and T traded phone numbers with Abdullah and left, Buck driving his own car.
“You guys have had some excitement,” Buck said.
“Not as much as you’re about to have.”
“I can’t wait. I should call Chloe.”
“I wouldn’t do that just yet. I understand the doctor has her on oxygen and is going to induce labor, but they’re trying to stall for you.”
Buck sped up. They were already bouncing so that each had to brace himself with a hand on the ceiling. “What was that?” Buck said, studying the rearview mirror and then swerving to miss the giant concrete pile he had forgotten about on Willow Road.
“I don’t see anything,” T said, looking back.
Buck shrugged. “Thought I saw a bike.”
T looked again. “If there’s a bike back there, its light is off. Probably your imagination.”
Buck looked again. His mind was playing tricks on him, and why not? He’d have let T drive if T knew where they were going.
“You want me to call Abdullah?” T said. “Make sure he’s still got an eye on Ernie?”
“Maybe you’d better.”
T dialed. “How are things going, my friend? . . . All right? . . . Yes, he’s a fascinating boy. You won’t let him hoodwink you now, will you? . . . Just an expression. It means put one over on you, ah, pull a fast one, um, cheat you, swindle you. . . . Attaboy, Abdullah. You should be able to get to sleep now. You’ve stalled him long enough.”
Buck and T pulled into the yard behind the safe house just before ten, and Buck was out of the car before the engine died. Chloe, who had just experienced her first contraction, beamed when she saw him. Doc Charles greeted him with a point to the sink. “First things first, stranger.”
Buck washed up and moved to Chloe’s side, where he took her hand. “Thank you, God,” he said aloud. “I would not want to have missed this.”
“I would like to pray too,” Tsion said.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” Buck said.
“Doctor, you have a waiver on closing your eyes. Almighty God, we are grateful for your goodness and your protection. Thank you for bringing Buck to us, and just in time. We know we have no claim on your sovereign will, but we plead for a safe delivery, a perfect baby, and a healthy mother. We need this tiny ray of sunshine in a dark world. Grant us this, our Lord, but above all, we seek your will.”
Rayford’s head jerked up with a start at the sound of an engine coming to life in the yard. He scanned the room, looked at T, and said, “Hattie.”
Buck shouted, “Catch her! She can’t expose us like this!”
Chloe tried to sit up. “Relax, Chloe!” Floyd said. “I’ll be fine with Buck and Tsion if you other two have to go after her. But just do it and stay out of here.”
Rayford dashed past T and skipped down the steps and out the door. He heard a motorcycle engine, and the Rover was missing. He and T jumped into T’s Jeep, but the keys were gone. Rayford ran back in the house. “Floyd! The keys!”
“Agh!” Floyd said. “Tsion, my right pants pocket, and then you’ll have to wash again.”
Tsion tossed Rayford the keys, and Rayford and T were soon careening back toward Palwaukee. “So Ernie followed you after all?”
“Impossible,” T said. “We talked to Abdullah on our way, and he said Ernie was still there. Buck did think he saw something a couple of times though.”
“Maybe Ernie had the drop on Abdullah and made him say that.”
“He was pretty convincing. Small talk, details, and all.”
“Frankly that doesn’t sound like Abdullah. Call him.”
Abdullah answered on the second ring. “Did I wake you? . . . Listen, just answer yes or no. Is Ernie still there? . . . He is? What’s he doing? . . . Digging? Put him on for me, will you?”
Rayford shook his head. “I’m telling you, he’s not—”
“Ernie? Hey, how’s it goin’, man? Whatcha doin’? . . . Cleaning Ken’s area? Nice of you. Abdullah said you were digging. . . . Just sweeping, huh? . . . Yeah, I can see how he could mistake that for digging. Well, tell him we’ll see him in a few hours.”
Buck could not imagine what Hattie was up to. He had long since quit trying to figure her out. Where would she go in the middle of the night besides crazy? Maybe that was it. She’d got cabin fever and just had to escape. It’d be just like her to get lost and wind up leading someone to the safe house.
Chloe gripped his hand and grunted. Buck looked to Doc, who had attached a fetal monitor to the baby’s skull through the uterus. He said it was as accurate as it could be and that he was encouraged. “We’re going to have a baby tonight,” he said. “And it’s going to be all right.”
Buck sighed heavily, too excited to notice his fatigue. He also held out a sliver of realism, knowing that for the sake of the patient it was just like Floyd to sound more optimistic than he felt. Buck was glad he was there, no matter what happened. He would not have wanted Chloe to go through this alone, regardless of the outcome.
“So Ernie really is a gold digger,” Rayford said.
T nodded. “And I’ll bet you dollars to donuts we’ll find Bo has been released from Young Memorial too. Shall I find out?”
“Sure.”
“Humph,” T said a few minutes later, his hand over the phone. “They say he’s still registered.”
“Ask to talk with him. No wait, ask for Leah and let me talk to her.” T did and handed him the phone. “Leah, it’s Rayford Steele, friend of Dr. Charles.”
“What now?” she said, but not unpleasantly.
“We just need to know if a patient who has not checked out or been released might be gone anyway. Name’s Bo something. Just a minute, I’ll get the—”
“Beauregard Hanson,” she said. “We don’t get a lot of Bos, you know. Yeah, he’s still here.”
“You’re sure?”
“You want me to check?”
“Would you?”
“I’ve done more than that for you guys.”
“That’s why we love you.”
“Hang on.”
Doc Charles seemed elated, and that made Buck feel better. “We’re doing the right thing,” Doc said. “This could not have waited, but the pulse is steady and has been for a while. We’re going to be OK. You doing all right, Mom?”
Chloe nodded the perspiring nod of the extremely pregnant.
“He’s gone?”
“Cleared out,” Leah said. “I didn’t like him anyway, him or that kid who was in the same room. He disappeared earlier today without a word, so I should have known.”
“We owe you one, Leah,” Rayford said.
“One?”
“Touché. Someday we’ll make this all up to you.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m guessing in five years or so.”
“I wish Daddy could be here,” Chloe said.
“Maybe he’ll be back in time,” Buck said. “What’s your guess on timing, Doc?”
“I don’t want to rush her. Sometimes even a moderate drip will cause fast action. All depends on mother and child. But we’re still doing well, and that’s what counts.”
“Amen,” Tsion said. And Buck thought the rabbi looked as excited as Buck felt.
“Do you believe this?” Rayford said, shaking his head. “Like the idiots they are, they don’t even know they’ve been followed.”
The Rover sat idling in front of the Quonset hut that had housed Ken and now Ernie and the temporary guest, Abdullah. T parked the jeep back about fifty feet and turned off his engine and lights. They sat watching. “Abdullah can take care of himself,” Rayford said, “but he is outnumbered.”
T got out. “Let’s see what they’re up to.”
When they got to the Quonset hut, they heard conversation. “Let the Rover idle,” Rayford whispered, “so they don’t know we’re here.”
They crouched near the curtained window and listened.
“Let me get this straight,” Abdullah was saying. “You’ll give me a brick of gold bullion for flying you to New Babylon.”
“That’s right,” Hattie said.
“And this gold belongs to you?”
“It belongs to my fiancé.”
“This young man is your fiancé?”
“Yes, I am!” Ernie said. “Soon’s I give you this gold. Now take it.”
“Do you realize,” Abdullah said, “that this gold is worth ten times the cash I would charge for the same flight?”
“But we want to go now,” Hattie said. “And I know that’s worth something.”
“If you want to go now, you picked the wrong pilot. I cannot fly for twenty-four hours.”
“Carpathia rescinded international air laws,” Hattie said. “I know. I used to work for him.”
“You did more than that for him, ma’am. Were you not engaged to him, too? How many fiancés do you have?”
“One fewer if we don’t get going,” she said.
Rayford signaled T to follow him about a hundred feet away. He phoned Abdullah.
“Hello, yes?”
“Abdullah, it’s Rayford Steele, but don’t say anything. Just repeat after me, all right?”
“All right.”
“Global Community Militia? . . . A stolen Range Rover? . . . Gold? . . . Prison? . . . Yes, you come and question me, but all the gold is here and the automobile too. . . . Yes, I will be here when you get here. . . . No, I do not want to go to prison.”
Abdullah broke in. “It’s working, Rayford.”
“Rayford?” he heard Hattie scream. “Ernie, wait!”
But Ernie and Bo were already riding double on the motorbike, leaving a plume of dust as they hightailed it from the airport.
Rayford and T found Abdullah looking fatigued but proud of himself, sitting across from Hattie, who sat on the floor with her back pressed against an army cot. “Let’s go, Hattie,” Rayford said. “Maybe we can get you back in time to see the new baby.”
Four hours later, in the darkest hour of the morning, Chloe Steele Williams gave birth to a healthy son. In tears she suckled him and announced his name.
Kenneth Bruce.
Even Hattie wept.