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JAYDA CRUZ. IT IS TIME to get up.
Jayda Cruz. It is time to get up.
Jayda Cruz. It is time to get up. “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest—and poverty will come on you like a thief and scarcity like an armed man.” Proverbs 24:33 and 34.
“Whatever! I’m up already.” I dragged myself from the bed and stumbled to the shower. Despite yesterday’s wonderful events, I hadn’t slept well. As the hot water hit me and my mind began to wake up, that stupid, horrid dream of several weeks past reared its ugly head.
Again.
Although Zander and I had prayed over the nightmare and although the abject terror of it had faded, the dream was never far from my thoughts. Over and over it played. For almost four weeks at this point! We’d dissected the dream from every angle, but my disquiet persisted, as if an element of the dream remained locked, an aspect I hadn’t yet grasped.
Whatever “it” was, it nagged and troubled me. Last night, it kept me from restful sleep.
What is it?
I leaned against the shower’s tile and let the steaming spray pound me while I rewound the dream to the place where I’d first spotted the serpent’s winding form beneath the mist.
Although the head of the snake was severed, the President has uncovered evidence . . .
“Yeah, yeah. Enough already.” If I never heard Gamble’s voice repeat those words, it would be too soon.
Where did I leave off? Oh, yeah.
Through the soupy fog I followed the broad, pointed snout leading the undulating body closer, ever closer in my direction. Then I caught the quick glimpse of one golden eye.
Although the head of the snake was severed, the President—
“Shut up! I’m trying to think here!”
The serpent’s head rose from the mist and fixed its malignant eyes on me.
“The head.” I shivered despite the hot, stinging needles of the shower. “But Harmon died, so what can it mean?”
The snake’s eyes held me in their thrall, and I felt myself falling deeper into them. “In the name of Jesus, stop. Just STOP IT!”
I pulled my gaze away from the snake’s—then jerked it back. Something had changed. The alteration was subtle but marked. No longer entranced by the serpent’s gaze, I focused on what was different. The eyes . . . they were darker, more of an amber, and something about their shape bothered me. They had a slight slant to them, and—
What had teased and eluded me burst on my consciousness.
As if the spray pummeling my skin had turned to ice water, the force of the revelation dropped me to my knees in the shower stall. The air whooshed from my lungs.
Instead of being concealed or obscure, the truth had been too obvious.
“Harmon wasn’t the head,” I whispered. “Someone else is.”
I scrambled to my feet, wrenched the faucets off, and grabbed a towel. “Zander!”
No answer.
I dried off and dressed as quickly as I could. “Zander? Zander!”
“Yeah?” He appeared in our bedroom door, hair disheveled but coffee in hand.
“The dream! I’ve figured it out. The dream—the part . . . the other piece of it.” I was flustered and incoherent.
Zander saluted me with his mug. “Hon, you need coffee.”
Yes, I did. Minutes later we were seated at our little dinette, a mug grasped between my hands.
“Okay, now what about the dream?” Zander asked.
“It was too simple,” I replied. “What Gamble said, Although the head of the snake was severed?”
“Yeah? Head severed. Harmon dead. Got it.”
“No. That’s the point. It wasn’t Harmon. We thought he was the head, but he wasn’t.”
Zander went still. I saw when the gears engaged.
“But, if Harmon wasn’t the head . . .”
I nodded. “All of us—the President, Kennedy, Gamble, you and I—we’ve been operating under the presumption that Harmon was the leader of the conspiracy, that he was directing the other players. My infiltration of the NSA was to flush out the remnants of the plot. We assumed that with Harmon’s death, the plan to unseat the presidency was largely over.”
“But . . . if we are wrong?”
“Then the conspiracy is alive and intact—like the serpent concealed in the mist, hidden, but still stalking its prey.”
“The President.”
“Yes. We need to tell Gamble. Now.”
I grabbed my phone and keyed in Gamble’s number.
He answered on the second ring. “Yeah?”
“Gamble. I need to tell you something, something important.”
***
WE HIT THE DOJO THAT night basically to work off our frustration. Well, my frustration.
Okay. I was the one frustrated. Seriously so.
Zander and I viewed the final revelation from my nightmare as a momentous and vital piece of information. But, when we’d called Gamble that morning, let’s just say that he had been less than enthused.
“Let me get this straight. You, Jayda, had a bad dream. I had a bad dream once. Right after I ate Thai food. Turns out I’m allergic to MSG—and it was loaded with it. Gave me hives. Made me itch.”
“It wasn’t that kind of dream, Gamble. When I woke up, I remembered every tiny detail of it and was able to repeat it to Zander.”
“But you had this dream, what, a month ago now? And just this morning it made sense?”
“It always made sense, Gamble, but one piece of the meaning sort of eluded me. I’ve been trying to puzzle it out since then, and I finally got it.”
“Jayda, I don’t mean to imply that you guys are strange or anything, but not everyone believes that dreams have real meaning.”
“Some dreams do, Gamble. Not all, but some.”
“And you can tell which ones do and which ones don’t . . . how?”
Grrr!
I knew then that we weren’t going to convince him. Nevertheless, I had persisted. “The upshot, the reason I called, is this, Gamble: We’ve been working from the supposition (to quote you) that Harmon was ‘the head of the snake.’ But if Harmon wasn’t ‘the head,’ and if he wasn’t the leader, then someone else is. And that means that the conspiracy is still active. We should be looking for the real head, the hidden leader.”
He grunted, not convinced. “Okay. I’ll pass your thoughts on to Kennedy, but I doubt he’ll put any more credence in the source than I can.”
Then he hung up.
“He doesn’t believe me, Zander.”
“I don’t think it’s about believing you, Jay.”
Jayda Cruz, perhaps this scripture applies to Agent Gamble: “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.”
“The nanomites are right, Jayda. Gamble doesn’t believe in God-given dreams because he doesn’t believe in God, because he hasn’t surrendered to Jesus. That makes him blind to the realm of the Spirit.”
The nanomites chimed in, adding, “The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.”
“You shouldn’t encourage them, Zander.”
“Even when they get it right for a change? It’s simple, really: Gamble doesn’t know God, so he can’t perceive the things of God.”
I’d gone off to work in a huff, but I’d kept to myself and had nursed my worry and aggravation most of the day. That evening, when I got home, I was still frustrated and more than a little down.
Zander and I ate dinner and headed straight to the dojo. It took two hours of non-stop sparring as though my life depended on how I fought, but Gus-Gus and Ninja-Noid managed to beat most of the vexation out of me.
I was no longer frustrated. Just depressed.
Ugh.
On the way home, Zander’s hand snuck out and snagged mine.
“Hey. Will ice cream make it all better?”
“I dunno,” I sighed. However, after a moment of reflection, I asked, “Ice cream with sprinkles?”
“But, of course.”
“And crunched-up Oreos?”
“Yup.”
“And gummy bears?”
“You can have anything you want, sweetie. So, ice cream?”
“Yes, please.”
I sniffed to myself, Ha-ha, Mr. Special-Agent-Man Ross Gamble. I’m having ice cream and you’re not—and I’m not sharing with you.
Ya big dummy.
Somehow that made me feel better, too.
~~**~~
