Unstable angina. Fatal outcome. Dynamic coronary thrombosis leading to infarction and sudden death. Possible peripheral embolization culminating in total vascular occlusion.
The only other medical discovery of any significance was the slightly elevated CaCl levels within the blood—hardly interesting and certainly not suspicious.
Ventricular fibrillation leading to heart failure was the final conclusion of the forensic pathologist.
* * *
Upon being told of the president’s sudden death, the National Security Advisor turned away and sadly shook his head. “It was simply too much for her,” he whispered to the general who had brought him the shocking news. “Truth is, the burden of the presidency might be too much to ask of anyone right now.”
Chapter Eight
East Side, Chicago, Illinois
They helped Luke up the bare cement stairway. Ammon held his brother’s weight, his right arm around his waist, Sara on the other side. Luke was getting heavier as they climbed. Sam felt a mushy wetness against his hand and knew the dressing on Luke’s back was saturated. His brother was growing weak now, but they all were. They were all exhausted, barely hanging by a thread, the last couple of days, the last week, the last month stripping them bare of any emotional reserves, leaving them physically and mentally worn down to the bone. As they worked their way up to Mary’s apartment, Sam sucked a shallow breath. The stairwell stank, graffiti covered most of the walls, and just a hint of light bled in from the small, wire-mesh windows on each landing. Rounding the second corner, Sam heard a woman gasp and looked up. Mary Dupree was waiting for them on the third floor, Azadeh at her side.
Mary stared, her dark eyes wide in disbelief, her mouth wide. Stepping down, she glanced at Azadeh, then ran down the flight of stairs. Nudging Sara aside, she draped Luke’s arm across her own shoulders. Azadeh followed, her face clouded with concern. Reaching out to Sam, she spoke in Farsi, but he didn’t catch her hurried words and didn’t understand.
Mary moved carefully, matching Luke’s slow steps. “Why isn’t he in the hospital?” she whispered to Sara as they climbed.
Sara patted her arm reassuringly. “It’s okay,” she said.
“They should have kept him in the hospital!” Mary’s voice was angry.
“It’s okay. Don’t be upset. We’ll explain everything.”
Something in Sara’s words settled Mary down and she turned her attention now to Luke. “Come on, baby!” she said as she helped him up the last flight of stairs, whispering encouragingly in his ear, like a mother to a child. “Almost there, baby. You can do it. Almost there.” Her voice was soft, her accent musical.
Luke turned to her and smiled weakly. “I’m not dying here, Miss Dupree. You know that, right?”
“Shhh, child. You save your strength now. Mary’s going to take care of you.”
Sara listened, a weak smile crossing her weary face. So good. So strong. Mary was her family now.
* * *
They sat around the small kitchen table: Mary holding Kelly Beth, who was asleep now in her arms; Sara next to her, her hands resting on the table; Azadeh against the back wall, her eyes moving constantly, unsure of her status among the group; Ammon in the last chair, leaning heavily upon the table. Sam was sitting on the counter. Luke was in the back bedroom. He had a bit of fever but was sleeping now.
Ammon looked at all the others. “It’s amazing,” was all he said.
They sat in silence, thinking, wondering, trying to put the miracles they had witnessed into perspective. Mary held her little girl ever tighter, rocking her in her arms, holding her as if she’d never let her go. “It’s not amazing,” she countered, resting her chin on Kelly Beth’s head. The child’s eyes remained closed. “It’s the hand of God, Ammon. Pure and true. The hand of God, just like in the Holy Book. The virgin birth. The rise of Lazarus. The healing of the leper. Mercy of the Father.” She choked, her voice falling as she glanced down at the floor, then lifted her eyes up to Sara. “These sons of yours. This priesthood. Angels. Blessings. I don’t understand any of it. I don’t understand it at all. I don’t know how it happened. All I know is what I know: My little girl was dying, dying right before my very eyes. I’ve watched others passing; I know what happens to them just before they slip away. They lose interest in the world, folding into themselves. They become smaller, shallow, the darkness drawing near. That was happening to my baby. She was just a day away . . .” Her voice trailed off again and she swallowed hard. “I had taken on her suffering as if it were my own. Her pain was my pain, her suffering was my suffering, her despair my own. How many nights had I begged Him for my daughter? Lord, I believe. Forgive me for my weakness. Help my unbelief. Lord, will you have mercy? Will you help my little girl? Help us, Lord, I begged him.” She glanced again at Sam, who had given Kelly Beth the priesthood blessing, then shook her head. “I don’t know how it happened. All I know is that it’s true.”
No one spoke. A sweet, peaceful feeling settled over the room as the sounds from the crowded streets drifted through the window. Azadeh kept her head down, trying to understand. So many new words, so many new ideas. Still, she understood the general feeling and somehow she knew that what Mary said was true.
Sara reached across the table and took Mary’s hand. “You’re a good person, Mary, and God has heard your prayers.”
“I know lots of good people who don’t get answers to their prayers. At least that’s the way it seems. So why me? Why my daughter? I feel so unworthy.” Her lower lip trembled and her cheeks were stained with tears, but she didn’t look away or waver, staring into Sara’s eyes.
Sara tightened her grip on Mary’s hand. “No one can answer that, Mary. You’ll probably never know. But I do think that we were meant to be together. I think we were sent to find you, to help you and Kelly Beth. I think you were sent to help us, too.”
“Me! I can’t do anything for you.”
“You don’t know that, Mary. You don’t know what the future has in store.”
Mary’s face was clearly skeptical. Sara patted her hand a final time and sat back. “Everything that has happened has to have happened for a reason. Everything we’ve been through, it is all part of the plan.”
“The plan?” Mary wondered. “Do you really think God planned for this to happen?” She nodded to the small apartment window, indicating the death and chaos taking place down on the street. “Is all this really what He wanted?” She wasn’t doubting. She wasn’t faithless. She just really didn’t know.
Sara looked down at the table, her mind flooding with memories of her husband, the strength of his arms, the smell of his hair, his patience, his faith, his determination to do the right thing, regardless of the cost. The life that he had chosen was full but as demanding as any she could imagine, hard and short. She thought of the endless nights she had waited for him to come home—days, weeks, months when he didn’t come home at all. And now she would have to wait for years. Such a long time. But she accepted that. It wasn’t over, and she knew that she would see him again, maybe before she was even ready. She sighed, then turned to Mary. “Everything that happens is a part of His plan. No matter what happens to us, to our children, to either you or me, there is a purpose and reason for it.”
Mary didn’t answer as she clung to her child.
Ammon looked up at his mother. “How serious are Luke’s wounds?” he asked.
Sara twirled her fingers nervously. She had wiped the blood away with a towel, but without any water she couldn’t wash them and they were tinted crimson now. “I don’t know. The wounds are deep, or at least they look deep to me. I changed the dressings. They bled awhile, but I don’t know if . . .”
“They’re fine,” Sam broke in. He had examined Luke’s injuries as well. “Two small entry and exit wounds. Believe me, I’ve seen way worse. They have perforated the skin and muscle and a little of the fat and tissue underneath, but they’re not into the organs, certainly not as deep as bone. He seems kind of
weak, but frankly, we all are. I’m sure the wounds will heal nicely and it won’t take too long.”
Mary stared at Sara, her eyes still wide in wonder. “An entry wound . . . an exit wound . . .”
No one said anything.
“My little girl here was dying . . .”
A deep and sacred silence.
Mary looked up at the heavens and lifted both of her arms. “Thank you, God,” she prayed.
* * *
They had dinner. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to fill them: canned beans, Spam, a handful of crackers. They sipped the water carefully—it was the most precious thing they had, and they had much less of it than of food. After eating, Sam shot a wary eye toward the closet where they had hidden the three packs of supplies they had brought with them. Underneath the backpacks were two camel packs of water as well as a few other emergency items they had taken from the trunk before hiding the car in the stand of trees along the road. He thought of the other things left in the car: the gold coins, the rest of the food, the clothes, the sleeping bags, more emergency supplies. They had taken everything that they could carry with them, but they had also had to find a way to carry Luke, and so they hadn’t been able to bring as much as Sam would have liked. Many items had been left behind, buried in the muddy earth not far from the abandoned car.
“All right, what are we going to do now?” Sara said.
No one answered. No one knew. Sara thought she heard a clock tick and looked around suddenly, the sound already foreign and out of place. No electricity. No clock. Of course, she had been wrong.
Sam slid off the counter and walked to the kitchen window. Something from outside had caught his attention, and he leaned across the old sink, standing on his toes to peer down on the street. “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “It seems there aren’t any good options. But I will tell you this, we can’t stay here.”
Azadeh looked around anxiously. Up to this point she’d been quiet, but her eyes were expressive now and full of fear. Sara saw the look on her face but didn’t understand it. Mary, who knew her better, leaned across the table. “We’re trying to figure out what we’re going to do now,” she said to Azadeh to assure her. “Where we’re going to go, how to get there, you know, all that kind of thing.”
Azadeh concentrated, then turned to Sara. “When you say ‘we,’ you mean you and your sons . . .”
“All of us,” Sara assured her. “We’re going to stay together. We need to stay together. It’s better for us all.”
Azadeh’s eyes remained wary. She didn’t believe them, not yet, not completely. She wanted to. She desperately wanted to believe they wouldn’t leave her, but little in her life experience indicated that that would be true. It seemed much likelier that they were going to dump her, abandon her at the earliest possible moment. She was a liability, not an asset, and she had been around long enough to understand how it worked. So, though she tried, she remained on guard, searching for advantage as they talked.
Sara turned to Sam. “You say we can’t stay here,” she said. “Are you certain that’s true? This might be the best place we could be. It’s safe, at least, and certainly better than being out there on the street.”
Sam shook his head. “Maybe, but I don’t think so. It’s a rough neighborhood. We stand out. We’re a minority and not a welcome one.” He glanced at Azadeh. “Some even less than others. Hard as it will be for us, it will be much worse for her. She can’t blend in. Everyone will know where she came from. And let’s face it, no one’s too thrilled about Muslims or Middle Eastern people right now, especially out there on the street.”
“But she’s going to be the minority anywhere we go.”
“That’s true, but it’s a lot more than that, Mom. We need to get out of the city. From the looks of it, most people have decided to stay here. I’m guessing, like us, they don’t have anywhere else to go. But it’s going to get harder and harder to exist here. No food. No clean water. It can’t hold up for very long. And when it falls, I like our chances much more out in the country than here.”
Sara glanced at Ammon, who slowly nodded in agreement.
“I don’t know if I should leave my home,” Mary said, looking around the apartment she had lived in for so many years.
“We can’t tell you what to do,” Sara answered. “We’ll do everything we can to help you, but the truth is, there’s little we can do if you decide to stay here.” She glanced down at Kelly Beth, who was still sleeping in Mary’s arms, then nodded toward Azadeh. “You’ve also got to consider what is best for Kelly Beth and Azadeh. Are you going to be able to take care of them?”
Mary fell quiet. “I don’t know how I’ll even take care of myself.”
Another cold moment of silence.
“We need to get to some other members,” Ammon said.
Sara pressed her lips together. Her blonde hair was hanging limp now, dirty and lifeless, but she was still beautiful, and her face creased while she thought. “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”
“If we could get to a church house, I think they would help us. They’ll be organized. They’ll have a plan. And it seems to me they’ll have some instructions on what the Saints should do. They’ll have food, maybe some other supplies . . .”
“Food?” Mary asked. “Why would they have food?”
Sara shrugged. Her mind shot back to the many times she and her family had been forced to move during her husband’s military career. She thought of the moving agent walking through their house to estimate the total weight of their household goods, then going into the basement and seeing cans of wheat stacked up to the ceiling. She could almost hear his voice as he called out to his companion, “Hey, Ronnie, looks like we’ve got a bunch of Mormons here,” swearing at the thought of hauling a thousand pounds of wheat and rice up the stairs. She smiled as she remembered, and Mary waited while she thought. “It’s a little hard to explain,” Sara finally said, “but members of our church have been encouraged to have a year’s worth of food storage for themselves and members of their families. Some don’t, but many do.”
Mary’s eyes grew wide. “You have a year’s worth of food stashed away somewhere?”
Sara laughed. “I don’t know if ‘stashed away’ is such a good description. Anyway, all of our storage, like everything else we own, we had to leave back in D.C.”
“But all the other Mormons have an entire year’s worth of food?” Mary sounded stunned.
“No, Mary, most don’t have that much, I don’t suppose, though I really don’t know.”
Mary thought, always rocking gently to keep the little girl from waking in her arms. “Does that mean the hard times are going to last a year?”
“I don’t know, Mary. No one knows, though I kind of doubt that we can mark a calendar and start counting down a year. It’s never that simple, is it? And it seems to me that God might have guessed there would be some people like us, members who have been cut off somehow, some people who couldn’t get their own food storage—”
“Or didn’t,” Ammon cut in.
Sara pressed her lips. “Yes, or didn’t choose to follow the counsel we were given. But either way, maybe God told people to have a year’s worth of food not because He knew they’d need that much but because He knew that most people wouldn’t do it and those who were faithful were going to have to share. Now, that’s just my own opinion and maybe it’s completely wrong, but I can’t imagine some of our fellow members won’t be willing to help us once they know the situation we’re in.”
Sam, who had been listening quietly to the exchange, finally spoke. “I don’t have much time,” he said.
Sara turned to him, her face falling.
“This war isn’t over. I only have two weeks.”
She stood and moved toward him and rested her head on his shoulder. “I’m just so thankful you were able to come to us even for just a few days. Imagine where we’d be if you hadn’t come.” The soldier held his mother. “How I wish you coul
d stay,” she whispered to him.
“Mom, you know I can’t.”
She pulled away and put the palm of her hand across his mouth. “I know. I understand. And I’m not angry. I’ve been married to a soldier for more than twenty years. Believe me, I understand. What it means is that we’ve got to move more quickly. We’ve got to figure out where we’re going and what we’re going to do.”
Ammon stood and moved toward the telephone. Mary watched him. “It’s not working,” she said.
The phone was sitting on the edge of the kitchen counter. He didn’t even pick it up. “You have a phone book?” he asked her.
Mary stood, walked to the cupboard, opened it, and dropped a thick black-and-yellow book into his arms. Ammon took it, thumbed through the back, referred to a couple of the maps in the front of the phone book, then motioned to his mother and Sam. They talked together. Wards. Stake centers. Bishops and presidents. Lots of things Mary didn’t understand.
Ten minutes later, they had a plan.
Chapter Nine
Taxi Two-Five
Thirty-One Miles Northeast of Little Rock, Arkansas
The lieutenant sat alone on a cracked vinyl crew seat in the front cargo compartment of the air force transport, his army pack at his feet, his handgun strapped in a camouflage canvas holster at his side. Sometimes he dozed. Sometimes he stared, his head back, his vacant eyes looking straight ahead. Inside the cabin, it was noisy enough to make it difficult to communicate, and the crew members who passed up and down the cargo compartment seemed more than happy to ignore him as they went about their work. For two hours he hardly moved, though sometimes he would glance down at his watch. The interior of the military transport aircraft was illuminated only by a line of small, recessed bulbs that ran along the sides of the floor and a few red lights spaced out on the cabin ceiling overhead. The vibration of the four enormous engines hummed throughout the aluminum frame and the air smelled like ozone, dry and clean but a little too sterile to be comfortable. There weren’t any windows in the cargo compartment but the cockpit door was open; if the lieutenant leaned over, he could look forward to the cockpit and through the front windscreen to see the utter darkness that had settled outside. It was shocking, how little starlight or even moonlight penetrated the clouds of dust that were blowing through the upper atmosphere—and there was not a single ground light anywhere.
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