The Sacrifice

by Robert Whitlow

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What’s her problem?” one of the boys asked when they were back in the hall.

  Each student picked up a box of paper. When the second box was removed, it exposed the face of the clock that was resting on the floor.

  One of the boys noticed the red numbers and said, “Someone left a clock in here.”

  “Leave it alone,” the other student responded. “Coach Leonard told us to get two boxes of paper. That’s it.”

  They closed the door and returned the key. The door was unlocked.

  While Kay made last-minute preparations for the luncheon and Tao helped set up chairs in the gym, the clock connected to the detonator steadily counted down the minutes and seconds. As his last act on the computer, Frank ran a set of several computer projections of the damage the bomb might cause. The results ranged from partial destruction of building A to total destruction of buildings A, B, and the cafeteria. In his mock-up, he also predicted the appearance of the high school from the air after detonation. He left the pages beside his computer.

  Frank hadn’t seen his father in two days. Frank Sr. was spending almost every night at his girlfriend’s condominium. Vivian Jesup had left a message on the answering machine that she wouldn’t be bringing Jodie by for her scheduled visit. She didn’t give a reason. Frank didn’t care what they did. They had no control over him; he held his future in his own hands.

  At 11:45 A.M. he walked out of the house carrying a duffel bag that contained an old, single-shot deer rifle that had belonged to his grandfather. He sat in the driveway for several minutes before starting his car’s engine. Frank didn’t know anything about the list of names on the wrinkled sheet of paper in Dr. Lassiter’s office. It had been prepared as a prank by a tenth grader who picked all but one of the names at random and slipped the note into the locker of a classmate whose name he put at the top of the list. That student never saw the page because it fell out of his locker the first time he opened it. It was then kicked around the hallway for a couple of days before becoming lodged in the doorway of the cleaning closet.

  Frank could have prepared a list, but his act was general, not specific. If he saw a few individuals that particularly deserved extermination, he would use the rifle. Otherwise, he trusted in the impersonal selection process of the bomb and would fire gunshots at random.

  Frank knew that he didn’t have to go to the school. The bomb was in place, and the devastation and death it would produce would not be significantly affected by his presence. He could easily dispose of the para- phernalia that might link him to the blast and casually watch the report on the national news shows later in the evening. But Frank didn’t want anonymity. He wanted his act to be connected with his name. Frank would be dead, but he knew that after today, his name would not be forgotten. He didn’t want to live and read about his deed. He wanted to stand in the fire.

  He started the car and backed out of the driveway.

  As the morning progressed, Tao became slightly agitated. He took out one of the pictures he was carrying in his pocket and looked at it. It was a young man. He studied the student’s features. He was a good-looking boy, but as always the eyes revealed the heart. The eyes told Tao that the student was troubled. How deeply was not clear. So, he prayed. The agitation didn’t leave. Tao wanted to be alone, but it was over an hour before his lunch break. He didn’t know how to ask his supervisor for permission to take an early lunch.

  When Scott arrived at the school, Frank was in the parking lot waiting until the clock ticked down a few more minutes. As the young lawyer walked up the sidewalk to the front door, he remembered the reservations he had about helping with the mock trial team at the time of his initial meeting with Dr. Lassiter. Today, he’d taken a few minutes during the morning to compose a brief speech for the students. He wanted to encourage them to keep believing in what they could accomplish. Frank was at the center of Scott’s thoughts. He wanted to say something that would open the door for future contact with the brilliant young man.

  It had been an overcast morning, but it was now bright and sunny. Scott pushed open the door and stepped into the broad hallway. It was beginning to fill with students moving from classes to the cafeteria. While he waited for Kay in the reception area of the office, he opened a yearbook that was two years old. It was amusing how much the students had changed in such a short time. In ninth grade, Dustin’s ears stuck out beyond his shirt collar, and Alisha Mason was wearing glasses so big they seemed to overwhelm her head.

  The door opened, and Kay stuck her head into the room.

  Smiling, she asked, “Ready?”

  Before Scott could answer, the first shot was fired.

  45

  Unto the breach.

  KING HENRY V, ACT 3, SCENE 1

  What was that?” Kay asked and stepped back into the hall. Someone screamed, and Scott ran to the door. Everything happened quickly and in slow motion at the same time. A second shot was fired, and Scott recognized the sound. It was a high-powered rifle. Students began running in every direction. Scott looked up and down the hallway but in the pandemonium of fast-moving legs, arms, and bodies, he couldn’t locate the gunman.

  “Get into the office!” he yelled at Kay.

  She remained frozen in shock and disbelief.

  Crouching down, Scott ran across the hall focusing his attention on the entrance of the building. He still couldn’t identify the shooter. A third shot came blazing out of the barrel of the gun. The bullet struck Kay in the head. Scott didn’t see her fall. A small pool of blood quickly formed on the shiny floor and mixed with her blond hair.

  A fourth shot ricocheted off the floor and into Scott’s right calf. He fell down, rolled over, and crawled to the door of the copy supply storage room. He jerked open the door, slid inside, and slammed the door shut. In the darkness he could feel the warm blood running down his leg to his ankle. Grimacing in pain, he reached up and felt along the wall until he found the light switch and flipped it on. He pulled up his pant leg. The wound was bleeding, but it wasn’t spurting as if an artery had been severed. He took off his shirt, wrapped it around the wound, and tied it tightly to slow the bleeding. Another shot rang out in the hallway. Scott didn’t know what to do. He desperately called back everything he could remember from his military training. He quickly surveyed the room. The only item that could be considered a makeshift weapon was a pair of red-handled scissors.

  Then he saw the clock.

  When the first shot was fired, Tao was bagging the trash in the boys’ bathroom around the corner from the main hallway. The sound of gunfire was not unfamiliar to him. He had fought many skirmishes with Communist troops in the mountains of his homeland. On two occasions he had crept in under enemy fire and rescued a wounded member of the unit composed of men from his village. In America, he would have received a medal. In Laos, he received a simple thank-you.

  At the sound of the shot, he stopped and looked toward the door. A boy standing next to him turned to a companion.

  “Was that a firecracker?” he asked.

  “It sounds like somebody dropped an M-80 in a toilet in the girls’ bathroom,” the other responded.

  Tao was at the door when the second shot was fired, and a stream of male and female students came rushing in screaming.

  “Somebody’s got a gun!” a boy yelled.

  It wasn’t difficult for Tao to recall his training. He slipped through the crowd into the hallway and moved along the wall until he reached the corner. He peeked around the edge of the wall and saw the young man with the rifle standing inside the front doorway. The boy raised the gun and fired again. Tao didn’t see Kay spin around and collapse on the floor. Tao moved along the wall. The shooter’s next shot was too low and went toward the floor. This was the bullet that hit Scott in the leg. Tao saw him fall, get up, and limp into the storage room. Tao kept his focus on the gun. The young man turned around and took a few steps back so he could look out the front doors of the building. He
did not seem upset or in a hurry.

  In the midst of the students fleeing down the hall, Tao saw a girl turn toward the shooter. He recognized her immediately as one of the members of the prayer group. Her picture had spent many days riding in his pocket. The girl leaned over and yelled several words at the top of her voice. The shooter turned in her direction and put a bullet in the chamber of his weapon. When he could clearly see the young man’s face, Tao gasped. The boy began walking toward the girl.

  Pushing aside two boxes of copy paper Scott saw the rest of the bomb and realized that the clock was a timer for an explosive device. There was exactly one minute and thirty seconds until it reached zero.

  After the explosion that killed Steve Robinson, Scott and the other members of his unit were debriefed about the nature of the bomb that snuffed out the life of their comrade and the way it might have been disarmed. It was hard for Scott to relive his mistake, but he had no choice. He learned that the key to disabling every bomb was proper disruption of the power source necessary to trigger the detonator. It was just like the movies. Cut the green wire; the world is saved. Cut the red wire; Armageddon is upon us. The problem lay in making the right judgment when there was limited time to analyze the relationship of the components of the device. In the movies, the hero always makes the right choice. In reality, the odds are less certain. The clock read 1:14.

  Scott’s mind began to work in overdrive. He quickly checked the back of the clock. If there was only one wire connected to the timer, he could cut that wire with the scissors, and the bomb would be placed in suspended animation—always waiting for the signal that never came. There were three black wires snaking out from the back of the clock. This meant there was a probable backup power source, the main line from the clock to the detonator, and a cross-connected wire that acted like a switch. If the switch wire was cut, it would connect the circuit in either direction and detonate the bomb. The only way to fool the device would be to cut the two power wires before cutting the switch wire. It would require two right choices without a wrong one in between. The clock read :55.

  The three black wires were identical. No green, red, and yellow. As soon as they exited the clock they were braided together, making it impossible to sort them out as they entered a small metal box. The box, which Scott guessed contained the batteries and the detonator, was screwed shut with ten screws. Even if Scott had a screwdriver, he couldn’t have opened the box and sorted through the jumble of wires and con- nectors in less than a minute. The wires left the small box on the other side and traveled a foot to a much larger box that contained the explosive material. The clock read :41.

  Scott picked up the scissors. He positioned his body so that it was between the large box and the door. He didn’t know the nature of the explosives, but if he could save someone else by partially blocking the explosion, he was willing to do it. It was quiet in the hallway, and Scott suddenly realized that the shooter was on a suicide mission, passing time until the bomb detonated. Scott had to decide which wires to cut. There was no time to flip a coin. The clock read :28.

  He decided on his strategy. Holding the wire nearest him as it exited the back of the clock, he opened the scissors so that the wire rested against the lower blade. The clock read :21. He held his breath and closed the scissors.

  In the hallway outside the storage room, Frank walked toward Janie Collins. He passed Kay’s body on the floor in front of the administrative offices. He did not know that his fourth shot had hit Scott in the leg or that the young lawyer was in the storage room. He checked his watch. There were less than thirty seconds until the bomb exploded. He wanted to be at ground zero when the ball of fire came roaring out of the room, vaporizing everything within its path.

  “You’ve shot Ms. Laramie! Please put down the gun!” Janie cried out.

  Frank raised the rifle toward her. When he did, he looked into her eyes. The eyes knew him. He hesitated. He wanted the moment to be impersonal, and Janie’s presence threatened his detachment.

  “Move!” he screamed.

  He doubted she could run fast enough or far enough to escape death, but in the insanity of the moment, he decided it was better for the bomb to kill her than for him to put a bullet into her chest. Her eyes wide, Janie backed away toward the corner where Tao waited.

  Waving the rifle back and forth, Frank approached the storage closet so he could open the door. He didn’t want anything to hinder the fiery hell he’d planned from being released in its greatest horror.

  When Scott squeezed the scissors, nothing happened. The wire was either tougher than he’d thought or the metal blades of the scissors were very dull. His first attempt only put a crease in the black insulation. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. Blood from the wound in his leg had soaked his makeshift bandage. He felt slightly dizzy. He didn’t realize how quiet it had become in the hallway. The clock read :20.

  He squeezed harder and severed the wire. No explosion.

  Of the three identical wires that exited the back of the clock, Scott had cut the wire nearest to him. In the only logic he could muster, he’d decided that the two outside wires were most likely the sources of power, leaving the middle wire as the switch wire. He opened the scissors to cut the wire farthest from him. He would have to squeeze harder. There wouldn’t be time for a second chance. The clock read :15.

  Tao saw the shooter’s attention directed away from Janie and toward the storage closet. He knew the wounded man was inside the little room. The young man reached for the doorknob. Tao quickly came into the hallway as Frank opened the door.

  When he opened the door, Frank saw Scott with a pair of scissors in his hand. A look of shock and surprise streaked across the young man’s face. He realized what Scott was attempting to do.

  “No!” Frank screamed and raised the gun toward Scott.

  The clock read :09.

  Tao dove in between Scott and the open door as Frank pulled the trigger. The bullet meant for Scott pierced Tao’s chest. Scott recoiled from the deafening sound of the gun at such close range. He looked at his hand. It was still holding the scissors. He squeezed the scissors and cut the wire. The last number on the clock face was :02. It went dark.

  Frank swore at Scott. Their eyes met and rage boiled out of the young man with a level of hate that Scott had never seen in another human face. Frank fumbled in his pocket for another shell.

  “I’ll kill you and blow up that bomb myself!”

  Tao rolled onto his side so that he faced the young man. Blood was already beginning to soak the top of his chest. He reached into the front pocket of his shirt and pulled out a picture of a smiling student with dark hair and eyes. The upper half of the photograph was already red with the janitor’s blood. He held the picture out toward Frank, then slowly brought his hands together in the universal sign of prayer. The picture dropped from his fingers to the floor.

  Frank took a step forward and looked down. It was his eleventh-grade photograph. Shaking his head to clear it from Tao’s gesture and the image of his own smiling face, he chambered the shell that would drill a hole through Scott’s heart. He could directly wire the bomb and bypass the clock.

  At that moment, the front door of the school opened, and the deputy sheriff assigned to the campus came into the hallway. He had finished patrolling the parking lot and wanted a cup of coffee. He saw Kay’s body on the floor and Frank, rifle in hand, standing over Tao. He pulled his pistol from the holster on his hip.

  “Drop that gun!” he commanded.

  Frank turned and fired. The bullet shattered the glass front of the trophy case. The officer fired back. The bullet hit Frank in his chest. The young man dropped the rifle, staggered backward, and reached one hand up to the place where the bullet had entered his body. His hand came away covered with blood. Puzzled, he looked at his hand and then collapsed on the floor.

  His gun still drawn, the deputy ran down the hallway. He reached the doorway to the storage closet and saw Scott sitting on the floor.
He pointed the gun at him.

  Scott weakly held up his hands.

  “I’m Scott Ellis, a lawyer. There was a bomb in here, but it’s disabled. Check the janitor.”

  The security officer examined Frank first. The young man was dead.

  Tao was on his side. The deputy rolled him over onto his back. He was still alive. Barely. The officer held Tao up in his arms. The Hmong man opened his eyes, but he didn’t see a Blanchard County sheriff ’s deputy.

  He saw the angels.

  Standing soberly, shoulder to shoulder, they nearly filled the empty hallway. He recognized some of the heavenly beings from the time around the table in the cafeteria. However, his ability to distinguish their individual characteristics was now heightened 1,000 percent. They weren’t uniform in appearance. Like people, each one was unique. Each one beautifully, fearfully different. And in an instant, he knew things about them and the duties they had performed at the command of the Lord they served. Today, their attention was focused on him.

  The one to the left of the deputy had been with Tao his entire life. He’d been the guardian whose gentle nudge kept Tao from stepping on a deadly snake when he was a little boy walking down a jungle path. He served as Tao’s unseen comrade in arms who warned him not to take a trail that would have led him into a Vietcong ambush. He became the barricade between Tao and the beckoning waters of death in the refugee camp. And during the great journey of spiritual discovery to Bangkok, the heavenly watchman kept sleepless vigil over Tao, whispering the words of heaven into the pilgrim’s newborn spirit. Tao saw more examples of the merciful, sovereign hand of God than could be chronicled in a dozen lifetimes.

  The other beings in the hall had their own stories to tell. Tao knew they were tales of great faith—adventures involving people of every color and language who loved Jesus and gave their lives for the sake of the Kingdom. The angels showed no emotion as they gazed at him, but there was a reality of love in their faces that filled him with something more life-giving than the blood flowing out of his body.