The driver had a name, and he was eager to give it. Ahmed. He was a talker, but Caleb didn’t seem so eager to chat, so Ahmed settled for talking to Rebecca. So he said after carefully eyeing Caleb for the fifth time.
It was Ahmed’s first year in the army, and he was eager to show the world that the kingdom could fight like any other superpower. Saudi Arabia might only have seventeen million people—okay, fourteen without the foreigners— but it owned much oil and great wealth and would one day be seen for its true power. He was one of a new breed of soldiers, ready to fight with modern weapons and a new courage. And so on and on with Rebecca’s encouragement. As long as he was boasting, his mind would remain occupied.
He was actually going past Jidda and, as it turned out, so were they. They rambled through three checkpoints without even stopping.
Rebecca couldn’t help wondering if Caleb’s God hadn’t come through after all. One look at the military Jeep, and the guards would merely wave a hand, evidence of the fact that this territory had not seen a proper military conflict in over a hundred years. If, on the other hand, Caleb had succeeded in commandeering the Jeep, they would have been stopped at the first checkpoint.
The ride lasted eight long awkward hours, the latter half of which Caleb slept through. It ended in a town called Wejh where Rebecca learned that Ahmed was on his way to a special military exercise near the border.
What kind of exercise?
A security exercise, he said. No civilian would make it anywhere near the border with Jordan without being thoroughly interrogated. In fact, the first post was set up just beyond this very town.
When she asked him why they were running the exercise, he took an indignant tone. That was military business. Way over her head. Over her head or not, Rebecca knew then that their ride with Ahmed had outlived its usefulness.
She reached over and shook Caleb only to discover that he had already woken. He’d heard as well. But instead of looking concerned, he wore a coy smile. She felt a small shaft of alarm rise through her chest.
“You may let us off here, Ahmed,” Caleb said.
“Here? I thought you were going all the way to Dhaba?”
“We are. But we need to rest and eat.”
“It’s only two more hours.”
Rebecca leaned forward and spoke quickly. “Actually, my friend has a condition which must be treated when it flares up,” she said apologetically.
“I’m sure you can understand.”
Ahmed glanced at Caleb in the mirror. “Condition? What kind of condition?”
“It’s something I’d rather not talk about.” The buildings were thinning as they approached the end of the town. “But we need to stop now. Don’t worry, we’ll be fine. You go on. Just let us off at this street.”
He pulled over, let them climb out, and sped off after they’d thanked him again.
They stood on the side of the empty street, watching the Jeep disappear to the north. “Well, that was a close call,” Rebecca said. “I can’t believe we got this far.”
“Condition?” Caleb said.
“Well, you do have a condition, don’t you? You’re obsessed with jumping off cliffs. Are you okay?”
“Yes.” A mischievous glint crossed his eyes. He turned and began to walk towards the north.
“Where are you going?” Rebecca asked.
“To cure my condition,” he said.
She ran after him, pulling the wrap from her face. Without the breeze from the Jeep, it was suffocating.
“What are you talking about? You heard what he said. There’s a post ahead!”
“Exactly.”
“Caleb, listen to me. I know you were embarrassed back there, but we can’t do this!”
“Do what? Never mind, I’ll tell you what I’m doing. I’m going to Jerusalem.” He winked at her and kept walking. “I’m going to Jerusalem because I can feel it drawing me like the tide. Nothing tells the tide to stop halfway in, and nothing is telling me to stop now. If you would like to find us a car, that’s fine, I’ll ride. But either way I’m going that way.” He pointed north.
They were walking around a bend, and suddenly the first soldiers came into view, a hundred meters off. Rebecca stopped.
“Caleb!”
“Yes, I see them.”
“Please, this is insane! You failed back at the Jeep. Your tricks didn’t work. Now for God’s sake, you don’t have to do this!”
“Yes, Rebecca. Actually, I do have to do this. For God’s sake.”
“No, you don’t!” The road ahead was thick with soldiers. Two tanks sat on each side of the post, their guns pointing ominously. “Don’t be so bullheaded! We walk in there and we might as well be dead.”
“I’m going.”
She felt panic rip through her spine. “Why? You don’t have to do this!”
He spun to her and hit his forehead with an open palm. “Yes, I do have to do this!” He stared at her fiercely. “And I think that you have to do it as well.”
His shoulders relaxed and he took a deep breath. “I can’t explain what happened at the Jeep, but then I’m not supposed to know how these things happen either. I’m only supposed to do them.” He pointed behind him at the soldiers, some of whom had noticed them and were watching them curiously. “I am supposed to do this. The world hangs in the balance, and you want me to question now?”
“But—”
“We don’t have time, Rebecca.” He lowered his arm and walked back for her. “Please, you aren’t here by mistake. While we were in the desert, did you ever think you’d be here, so far north, with me? No, but you are, Rebecca. And you’re alive. Please, come. You’ll see. I promise you’ll see.”
She looked into his eyes, and for the hundredth time since first meeting him, she wanted to curse him. To curse this mad grip he seemed to have on her. To curse the impossible situation he seemed to have worked her into. He was determined to help her jump off one of his cliffs.
“We will die,” she said.
“We’ll die if we go back.”
The sweat on the back of her neck felt chilled. Every fiber in her legs screamed for her to spin and run south, away from the hundreds of armed soldiers waiting seventy meters away. Soldiers who were undoubtedly looking for a man and a woman, foreigners, traveling together.
“This is crazy!” she whispered through clenched teeth.
“Madness,” he said.
The world seemed to slow around her. She became aware of her steady breathing.
“It’s ridiculous,” she said.
“It’s freedom,” he said and she blinked at the twinkle in his eye.
She took her first step towards the soldiers before she had consciously made up her mind to go with him. Caleb turned and walked by her side in the direction of the tanks.
There were at least three dozen guards on the road itself, leaning on the tanks. They wore the familiar tan desert garb of the Saudi army. Slowly they ceased their talking and turned to face Caleb and Rebecca.
“You will remember this, Rebecca,” Caleb said in a very soft voice.
“Watch carefully.”
It occurred to her that she had left the wrap off her face. Maybe that’s what the soldiers were staring at. They’d turned and stood squarely, with crossed arms, like a firing squad. She was marching to her death.
Rebecca swallowed. Dear God, have mercy on me. I beg you, have mercy on me!
Beside her, Caleb lifted both arms out to them, as if he wanted to bless them. She glanced at his face—his eyes might as well have been on fire. The corners of his mouth twitched to a crazy thin grin. He kept a steady pace, and she forced herself to keep stride with him against her will.
Several of the soldiers shifted their weapons. They clearly weren’t waiting with open arms.
“I want to tell you something, Rebecca,” Caleb said without turning. “The power of God is not in the Ark. It’s not in the Ark of the Covenant because there’s a New Covenant between God and man, and that Covenant is Christ’s promise to send the Holy Spirit. He wants you to know that. It’s his power, not mine.”
Rebecca felt a lump of desperation rise through her throat, and her vision suddenly blurred with tears. Dear God, have mercy on me.
“Stop!”
Caleb did not stop.
She matched his stride. They were thirty meters away. Several rifle barrels lifted.
“Stop! I said, stop!” The cry was tighter and higher pitched.
A murmur rippled over the waiting soldiers—but Caleb walked on. Rebecca could feel her hands shaking at her sides.
“It’s them. It’s them!” someone cried in Arabic.
With those words, two things happened simultaneously in a way Rebecca never could have imagined. The first was a clanking sound of three dozen rifles snatched up to aim in their direction. That she understood clearly enough, like a bullet between the eyes.
But the second came on the heels of the first: an impossible sense of peace—almost as if it were a material substance she’d walked into—settling around her mind. Or perhaps she had indeed stepped off a cliff, and instead of falling, she was floating on this cloud of simple assurance. It was the kind of peace she thought might arrive the moment before death.
Caleb stopped immediately ahead and to the left of her. She followed his lead, coming abreast. He suddenly lifted his chin to the sky, threw his fists up to God, and screamed.
Rebecca jerked, surprised. A heavy weight suddenly pressed against her chest, and she immediately began to cry. Her mind scrambled for orientation. Her first instinct was to think she’d been shot. The shock she felt was the result of a bullet to her chest.
She turned to face Caleb. He stood there with an open jaw, screaming, like Hadane had in the desert. Only this time she could hear it. This time she was somehow in that scream.
She faced the soldiers. They stood exactly as they had been standing a second ago, looking wide-eyed, breathing steadily. But they were not shooting. The scene seemed frozen in time, with this latter-day Elijah screaming at the sky.
One of the soldiers suddenly lowered his rifle and looked around, absently. He scratched behind his ear and swatted at a fly. Others began to shift and look around, as if also distracted. Two of them began to talk beneath the scream that filled the air beside her.
Rebecca gawked at them, stunned. The soldier right in front of her, the one who had called for them to stop, glanced at her casually. He said something she imagined might be a greeting.
The air suddenly fell quiet. She looked slowly over at Caleb, afraid to break the spell. He gazed about, awed.
“Where are you going, miss?” It was the soldier in front of her.
Rebecca just looked at him.
“We are going to Jerusalem,” Caleb answered, putting his hand on her shoulder.
“Jerusalem. The holy city.” He nodded, satisfied.
“Thank you,” Caleb said to him. He nodded at Rebecca nonchalantly, as if this sort of thing were an everyday occurrence. “We should hurry.”
Caleb walked down the blacktop, between the two tanks and their mob of soldiers, nodding at one and then another. She followed quickly. Her bones seemed to be vibrating with a silent energy that hung in the air. Her legs felt wobbly, but she walked on, past nothing more than bored soldiers who hardly seemed to notice their passing.
Caleb stopped and turned in the road, just past the tanks. “You see, Rebecca? Do you see this?”
“Yes! Yes, I see! What—”
“Then you are seeing the hand of God.”
She glanced back. “Do . . . do they see us?”
“They seem to.”
“Then why aren’t they attacking us?”
“I don’t know. You could ask the same of Shadrach or Meshach or Daniel or Jonah. We are alive.” He continued walking and she strode beside him, heart beating like a tom-tom. They rounded a bend and the soldiers were gone.
Rebecca kept looking back, to make sure.
“This . . . this is hard to believe.”
“Believe it.”
“I’m not sure I have a choice anymore.”
They walked in silence except for the dull sound of their shoes striking asphalt. Caleb kept smiling at her, but he didn’t seem interested in explaining more. She wasn’t sure he knew more than he’d said. This had been God. Period.
“What now?” she finally asked.
“Now we go to show the world what we’ve seen.”
“I’m . . . I’m not sure anyone would believe . . .”
He was three steps ahead of her and he suddenly tripped.
But it wasn’t really a trip. He was hurled forward, midstride. He tried to catch himself with his right hand, but it buckled and he sprawled to his face on the blacktop’s yellow dotted line.
Rebecca’s heart slammed into her throat like a fist. She saw the blood immediately, seeping from the side of his head. For an impossibly long moment she stood, immobilized.
Caleb had been shot!
A bullet tugged at her tunic, just below her armpit. Panic swallowed her and she dove for the side of the road. The faint pfft, pfft of a silenced rifle reached her ear, and she knew in that instant, rolling to roadside boulders for cover, that Ismael was not dead. She’d heard this rifle before.
A dozen years of honed instinct screamed to the surface. She scrambled for a large boulder to the right of an outcropping. They had just been ambushed; this was a fact. Caleb had been shot in the head; this was also a fact. They had walked nonchalantly through the soldiers, and then Caleb had taken a bullet in his head.
But she didn’t know if he was dead. It could be a surface wound—head wounds tended to bleed more than most.
She stopped herself and closed her eyes. Dear God, listen to me . . . Caleb. Oh, dear Caleb! Caleb . . .
A bullet cut through the air centimeters from her ear and she ducked. She had to survive. Her heart was aching, as if one of those bullets had lodged itself at its core, but she forced herself to shove the emotion from her mind. Her eyes blurred with tears, and she grunted.
Rebecca ground her teeth, counted to three, and lunged to her left. She dropped to the sand, rolled backward, back behind the boulder, and sprang to the right, into a full sprint. This she did without hesitation, knowing that very few marksmen could possibly follow such an abrupt change in direction with any accuracy.
Ismael came close. His slugs whined past her furiously. But she reached the large clump of boulders she’d angled for. She sprinted around them and ran for the hills in the cover of the boulders.
She already knew what she had to do. The sun was setting in the west, and she would soon have the dark with her.
Dear God, help me.
She ran away from Ismael, her eyes blurred with emotion, desperately pushing back the panic. Twice she stopped and started back, but she knew that was what he wanted, and she forced herself to run on. Every step felt like a small death to her. She was leaving a part of herself back there on the road.
Caleb lying there.