No one seemed to know.
Then a familiar voice came from the back of the group and Morty Rosen pushed his way through.
“I saw him,” he said. “All through this he looked like he wanted to get into the compound. But I just saw him again. He was alone. He was heading into the mouth of the tunnel.”
He paused, puzzled, then asked, “Did they nail Szabo?”
“I don’t know,” Kindhand said. “There’s a lot of dead in the tunnels.”
Then Kindhand left the group, and a couple of the Rebels went with him. He headed for the cave. There were few times in his life that he wanted something as badly as this, and that was that Bev LaDoux would be still alive.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Jim entered the Reject compound. He was armed with his SEAL knife and a Glock, fully loaded, and he was carrying it but he was beyond caring for this own personal safety. At some point in his life, he had come to realize that there were some things worth dying for, and once you accepted that, then, though you might be afraid to die, you were not so crippled with fear that you couldn’t proceed.
He did not really expect to encounter anyone. They were likely long gone through the tunnels. And Szabo. Where could he be? He could be dead, but every instinct in Jim said that he wouldn’t be. People like Szabo live. Other people die.
Jim really only cared about one thing. Finding Bev. He did not want to face it, but he knew he had to: it was highly likely she was dead. Szabo had killed her friend Ida. Why not her?
But if there was a chance that she was alive, even half alive, he did not want to let that go.
He thought about Bev. Oh, she was beautiful all right, and she had a figure like a movie star, but how beautiful was she inside? Exquisite. Like her father, who had died, she had put aside her fears and tried to be a missionary in this land that had become so unholy. No, Jim had never been religious, but he recognized how beautiful spirituality could be.
Now he stopped and uttered a prayer, a prayer to the God that she believed in to help him find her.
Please, God, he uttered to himself, please, God, let me find your beautiful child.
There were three doors leading out of the larger area. He was about to try each in turn when something occurred to him.
He called out her name: “Bev. Bev! Where are you?”
No answer.
He started for one of the doors when he heard something that raised the gooseflesh on his arms.
It was a sound, a sound like someone who was drunk trying to say his name.
It was coming from the middle door. He ran over and tried it. It was locked.
Again, the sound.
This time he opened it with his foot, crashing the lock off the doorjamb with one vicious kick. The door swung open.
Bev was lying on a table, face up, her arms and legs bound. She seemed okay . . . and then she turned toward him and he almost stopped dead.
The entire left side of her face looked like it had been eaten away. It was one red mass of flesh, her eye gone, and when he took a few steps and got close to her he was sure that one of her beautiful breasts was mutilated. . . .
He walked up to her and looked down.
He could not talk. All he could do was cry.
He cut her free, touched her face.
“Oh, my darling. Oh, my darling.”
She spoke. It was hard to understand her words, but he did.
“Cover me, Jim. Cover me.”
He took off his shirt and placed it over her torso . . . and then he saw it, lying on the floor. A brown bottle.
He went over and picked it up, sniffed it. He recognized the smell. They had used it on the farm.
Hydrochloric acid. Szabo had worked on her with hydrochloric acid.
He went back to her, put his hand on her face.
“He told me that I would walk around, proof that God did not exist.”
Jim wiped his eyes and kissed her on the forehead.
“But God is here. He didn’t take you away from me.”
A tear rolled out of the single good eye.
“How could you want me like this?”
“Oh, baby, “Jim said, tears rolling down his cheeks. “How could I not?”
Abruptly, there was a noise behind him, and Jim whirled, Glock in hand.
But it was Kindhand and others.
Jim looked at Kindhand, his eyes still full of tears.
“Szabo,” he said, “hydrochloric acid.”
Kindhand’s face collapsed in grief, the profound grief that only an Indian face formed by years of pain and outrage could express so well.
“I’m sorry, Jim.”
“But I still have her,” Jim said. “I still have her.”
Kindhand looked at Jim, and he realized that everything that Ben Raines had seen inside this man he was seeing now. Men, people didn’t come any better than this guy, he thought.
“We need a doctor.”
Kindhand did not need to ask any of the Rebels who came with him to get a doctor. They were out the door.
Jim leaned down toward Bev.
“Where did he go?” he asked.
“Out that way,” Bev said, pointing to a far door.
“I’ll be back, my love. Duke is getting a doctor, okay.”
“Okay.”
“Boy, you are one tough son of a beehive.”
“I wanted to live, Jim. I wanted to live for God—and you.”
Jim wanted to say, “I’ll be back,” but he couldn’t talk. Then he opened the door where she said Szabo had exited. It was a tunnel, very dark. Jim vanished into the darkness, the only light the fire in his eyes.
THIRTY-NINE
It was dark where Jim entered the tunnel, but he could see ahead that it was light in some spots, where there were shafts.
It stunk, the smell a blend of explosive gas and methane. He hadn’t gone twenty yards when he came across, near a shaft, his first body—or part of a body. It was a headless torso and, bizarrely, had no blood on the uniform. It was as if the Reject’s head had been blown off cleanly.
He had the Glock out, though he knew his chances of finding Szabo were very small. He was probably long gone by now. But you never knew.
Jim stopped and listened. This reminded him of when he was a little boy, though that was a lifetime away, when he stood in the forest in the dark and listened for the sound of animals, something that he had gotten very good at.
He heard nothing. He moved on.
The tunnel at this point was about seven feet high, though Jim knew, according to what had filtered back to the aboveground force, that some of them were a lot shorter—only three feet high. He hoped that didn’t happen soon.
Farther down were more bodies, these obviously killed with a flamethrower, their bodies charred black, their hands and arms in the classic boxer’s pose that the body assumes when it is burned alive.
He kept walking and then he came, as it were, to a fork in the tunnel. Straight ahead the tunnel’s height dropped dramatically, while to the right it was quite large.
If he were Szabo, what would he do? Would he go into the shorter tunnel?
No, he wouldn’t Szabo was a huge man. He would want to make sure that he could fit.
On the other hand, it would be a great way to throw off anyone pursuing him. Still, going into the short tunnel would mean he couldn’t travel quickly. Jim decided to take the tunnel where he could walk upright.
He stopped, listened again.
So far, he thought, he had seen no sign of Szabo. Nor any wildlife, such as rats.
He walked on. He tried to avoid imagining what Bev looked like, tried to control the bottomless rage he felt toward Szabo. He had to focus. If he found him, he would kill him, but walking through a tunnel enraged was not the way to be.
He walked on, and then he noticed something strange. Up ahead, on the ground in relatively good light, because it was directly under a shaft, was another body, but the body of a Believer. He could tell bec
ause the uniform was khaki colored and there was a large medallion.
He came over and looked at it. It was face up. It was a young man, just a kid, small, maybe seventeen or eighteen, with blond hair. He looked good, almost as if he were not dead.
Jim knelt down and felt for a pulse on his neck.
There was none, but the body felt warm. Jim lifted an arm. It was still limber, no sign of rigor mortis.
It was as if he had just died or been killed. Then Jim noticed it. On the neck, a bruise. He pushed the chin back a bit. More bruises.
Szabo had killed this kid, strangled him to death, and not long ago.
Jim got up and started to walk rapidly down the tunnel, occasionally stopping to try to listen, to try to see if Szabo was running ahead of him.
Nothing.
Jim kept walking, in and out of fields of light and near darkness. Then he saw up ahead that the tunnel turned sharply, and as he turned he felt as if someone had hit his wrist with a baseball bat, because the Glock was knocked from his hand. Before he could resist, fight back, do anything, Alex Szabo had knocked him to the ground and was straddling him, his hands clamped around his neck, gradually squeezing the life out of him.
Jim’s natural instinct was to grab those hands and try to pry them off his neck, but he could not, no more than he could pry a steel clamp off his neck.
He focused. He was not yet losing consciousness. He knew what he had to do. Szabo didn’t seem to care that Jim had his hands free.
Szabo looked down, smiling, his eyes glinting.
Jim wrapped his hand, which still had feeling despite the whack it took, around the handle of his SEAL knife. Now he could stab him, maybe take him out, but he might be wearing body armor. . . .
Jim felt the first wave of unconsciousness. He gathered his strength and then brought the knife across Szabo’s hand, just at the point where it met the wrist, and felt it go completely through the wrist and partly into the other hand.
Szabo recoiled in horror, realizing that one of his hands had been severed from his body. He got up, as if the action would somehow save him, but blood was spurting out of the stump at a high rate.
“You cut off my fucking hand!”
Now Jim, coughing, fighting to speak, stood up.
“I’m Bev’s husband, Mr. Szabo.”
Szabo was looking down at his hand, pressing it against his chest, trying to stop the flow of blood.
“Hey,” Jim was able to say, “don’t feel bad. Now you only have to buy one glove.”
Szabo fell to his knees, and Jim took a stride over and said: “You’re going to find out there is a God, Szabo. And you’re going to meet Him right now.”
And then Jim drove the SEAL knife all the way up to the hilt into the right side of Szabo’s muscular neck.
FORTY
Jim came up to Kindhand, who was standing by a large white tent, a medical facility that had been established. Jim knew Bev was inside.
“I caught up with Szabo,” he said.
“Where is he?”
“I killed him. He’s in one of the tunnels. I’ll show you later.”
“Okay, Jim.”
Jim nodded and went into the tent. Bev was lying on a stationary gurney. A small bald guy who was obviously a doctor was just leaving.
“Hi,” he said. His face was a mask of compassion.
“How’s she doing?” Jim asked. “I’m her husband.”
“She’ll survive,” the doctor said. “She’s one tough lady.”
“I know. Thanks.”
Jim went over to Bev.
She looked at him with her one eye. The other was covered with bandages, as was the rest of the left side of her face and her upper chest.
“Szabo’s dead,” Jim said. “He won’t be hurting anybody anymore.”
“Good.”
Jim leaned down and kissed her very gently on the lips, which were also damaged by the acid.
“Those were some beautiful things you said to me back there, Jim,” Bev said. “You know I won’t hold you to them.”
Jim looked at her and said, “You goddamn well better.”
“Look at me,” she said.
“I am.”
“I’m not all here,” she said, half laughing and half crying.
“Listen,” he said. “The important thing to me is that you didn’t lose the most important thing in my life.”
“What’s that?”
Jim leaned down and whispered in her ear, “Your butt.”
“Okay, Jim,” she said, her eye tearing.
“Now you just shut up. We’re going to get you back to health, and then we’re going to live in the mountains, and I think we’re going to be very happy . . . but with your approval, not right now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been fighting against being a soldier, but sometimes doing what you don’t want to do is the only way to do things right. Am I making sense?”
“Yes, you are.”
“So what do you think?”
“I think that you’re going to make a great soldier, and one day we will settle down. But I know one thing for sure.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re not going to be lonely for me.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m going with you.”
“You mean a female in the army?”
Bev kept a straight face.
“Ever hear of female Israeli soldiers?”
“I think I did.”
“They didn’t do too badly, did they?”
“I guess they didn’t.”
Then they both broke out laughing.
“Oh, Jim,” she said, “I love you so much.”
“And why not?” he asked, and kissed her gently on the lips.
The Last Rebel: Survivor Page 25
