Allah's Fire
Page 35
From: reprtrgrl
To: jcman
I don’t think I can begin to express what a gift it is to know the freedom found in being a Christian woman. Sure, as a believer I put myself under the authority of the Word of God, but its purpose is to help me develop to my fullest potential, not to imprison me and limit me. The Bible tells me God has given me special gifts and abilities. It tells me that God has planned a life of useful service for me and that God loves me and delights over me. How great is all of that?
From: jcman
To: reprtrgrl
I hope you noticed that all of those wonderful biblical promises are for us guys, too.
From: reprtrgrl
To: jcman
I noticed. Just goes to prove how wonderfully loving and accepting God is. Smile.
I leave tomorrow. Can’t wait
* * *
Liz didn’t know what to expect when she moved toward the security exit at the Fayetteville Regional Airport. John said he would meet her if he could, but he couldn’t promise.
“My life is never certain,” he’d said in an e-mail two days ago. “But if I have anything to say about it, I’ll be there.”
She didn’t want to think how disappointed—make that devastated—she’d be if he didn’t meet her. It scared her how he had engaged her heart so thoroughly and so quickly, but she couldn’t be happier.
Wait. She would be happier if John were waiting.
And he was. She walked out of the secure area, and there he was in jeans and a dark T-shirt, looking much as he had when running around the Lebanese countryside, but better all cleaned up, shaven, and smiling.
Suddenly she was self-conscious and tongue-tied. It was so easy to talk to him in her e-mails, but what should she do now? She smiled shyly as the heat rose in her cheeks. No two ways about it. She had it bad.
He took a step toward her and opened his arms. She stepped into them and burrowed close. She shut her eyes and held on tight.
“I’ve wanted to do this since I dragged you out of the warehouse,” he muttered in her ear.
“Mmm. Me, too.” They walked hand in hand to baggage claim, John carrying her computer case.
“I have three days,” he said.
“Guaranteed?”
He gave her a crooked smile. “I wish.”
She pointed out her suitcase, and he pulled it off the carousel. He stacked the computer on the case and wheeled it out to his car, his other hand still gripping hers. He popped the trunk and put the luggage in.
Liz stood between his car and the next, waiting for him to unlock the passenger door. When he slid into the narrow space beside her, it suddenly felt as private and intimate as a darkened room. Her mouth went dry, and she looked at him, only to find him staring back.
He reached out and ran a finger over the brow above the eye that had been battered by Frank’s scope. “Looks a lot better.”
“Feels a lot better.”
They looked at each other for long seconds. Then he leaned down and kissed her, a sweet, somewhat tentative kiss. When he drew back, she smiled. “Nice.”
He laughed and kissed her again, this time with total concentration. She wrapped her arms around him and enjoyed the ride.
“I’ve got to warn you,” he said when he pulled back. He looked so serious that Liz felt afraid. “For all kinds of reasons, both personal and professional, I make a lousy love interest.”
Her heart kicked. He’d said the L word. No, he’d said two L words. She had to laugh. “Lousy, huh?”
He looked a little disconcerted, as if he hadn’t meant to say the second L word. “Yeah, lousy. Gone at any time day or night and for weeks or months at a time without contact. Everything secret. I already told you how I came home to find Kim married to someone else.”
“Kim was a woman of poor character, no doubt about it. I, on the other hand, have guts.”
“I’ve noticed.” He grinned. “Does that mean you’re willing to see where this thing between us goes?”
She kissed him in answer. He held her close.
They talked easily on the drive to John’s cottage, and Liz needed only one glance to fall in love with the lake. She felt like a princess when John took her for a ride in the canoe, and she laughed when he took her to McDonald’s for dinner.
“Can’t have you be jealous of Sweeney,” John said.
When he dropped her at her motel for the night, John gave her a kiss that kept her warm all night.
The next day was spent getting ready for a cookout at the cottage with the men of Task Force Valor.
“They’re all coming,” John told her. “To see you.”
As Liz set the meat from Omaha Steaks out to thaw, she eyed John. “They’re coming for the food, and you know it.”
But when they came, Liz recognized a genuine delight on their parts as they hugged her. Even Sweeney seemed almost pleased.
The food was plentiful and delicious, the conversation nonstop, and Liz thought she’d never had a better time. She smiled at John across the lawn, and he smiled back, a special private smile that lit her heart.
St. Paul really did know what he was talking about, she thought. All things definitely worked together for good, and sometimes she and God actually defined “good” exactly the same.
After dinner Liz and John were sitting in lawn chairs talking to Rip and his date for the evening when John reached for his cell phone vibrating on his waist.
“Hello, Major Williams.”
All conversation stopped. Liz’s heart plummeted.
John sighed. “Roger that. We’ll be there immediately.”
The party exploded in groans and complaints as the men gathered their belongings and began to leave.
“I warned you,” John said as he hugged Liz good-bye. “A lousy love interest.”
She thought of the next day, the third day of his leave, stretching empty without him. Then she thought of something much worse—her whole future stretching empty without him.
“Just promise me one thing.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss him. “Call me as soon as you get back.”
He nodded. “If you promise me one thing in return. No insurance salesmen.”
Now there was a promise easy to keep.
Authors’ Note
Explosives Ordnance Disposal units began in the United States around 1940 when the need was recognized for a specially trained force of men who could deactivate and defuse explosives used in warfare. Over the next five decades, bomb disposal units and their successors, EOD teams, racked up an impressive track record of successful missions worldwide, both in wartime and in peace.
Today, Explosives Ordnance Disposal units are in such high demand that the Army is recalling Vietnam-era EOD technicians to help meet the need. At the outset of the war in Iraq, Special Operations forces found the ad-hoc nature of their relationships to the EOD teams lacking. The global war on terror also highlighted the need to make changes in those relationships.
Part of the difficulty has been that Army EOD soldiers are more technicians than combat soldiers. They are well trained in their military occupational specialties but are considered by the Army’s top brass to be support elements for frontline combat troops. By and large, they don’t train on things like close quarters battle or hand-to-hand combat, leaving those tasks to other units.
The Army has reportedly discussed the idea of instituting an operational EOD unit—a completely self-sufficient group of Special Forces soldiers who are cross-trained to be explosives experts. The Navy has added an EOD cell to its super-secret DEVGRU, or Development Group, which was part of the Navy Special Warfare Group. Delta Force, the Army’s elite and reclusive counterterrorist group, also has a special EOD section, but it is believed that they focus mostly on the really big missions, like hunting down nuclear threats around the globe.
The idea for Task Force Valor was built from a mixture of these real-life units and circumstances. Our team is fictional; its mission is a figment of th
e authors’ imaginations, based on the reality of the current world situation.
Our explosive—Iso-Triethyl Borane, or ITEB—actually exists as a liquid compound that reacts explosively with air, but we have fictionalized a few important details so as not to give anybody ideas. For the same reasons, while we have endeavored to portray the U.S. military and the Special Forces in a realistic and positive light, some realism has been intentionally distorted to avoid encroaching upon the tactical profile currently in use by the troops who are doing these kinds of missions for real.
Our Palestinian refugee camp Sainiq is fictitious. Named after a river south of Sidon, Sainiq presents many of the realities of the twelve camps that exist in Lebanon—lack of infrastructure, extremely crowded quarters, limited educational opportunities, poor health facilities, little or no sewerage, massive unemployment, and virulent unrest. Hopelessness.
The United Nations has been involved for years in trying to open up opportunities to those in the camps through education and training in fields like automobile mechanics, one of the few occupations open to Palestinians under Lebanese law. As we complete this book, Lebanon is making moves that the government pledges will ease the plight of the refugees. One step is the promise to open up more of the forbidden seventy occupations to Palestinians.
The fascinating thing to us as Americans living in the great melting pot where everyone, no matter their ethnic origin, becomes an American is that neither the Lebanese nor the Palestinians want those living in the camps assimilated into Lebanon. The Lebanese see Lebanon as a sovereign nation merely hosting those in the camps, and the Palestinians do not want to be Lebanese. To the fourth generation, they only want to go back to their homeland.
Do not think harshly of Lebanon though. Similar conditions exist in the refugee camps in Jordan and Syria and the rest of the Middle East. For many Christians, used to thinking of the establishment of Israel as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, it is easy to forget the plight of these refugees, many our brothers and sisters in Christ.
As we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, we must also pray God’s redemption on the children of Ishmael.
Dear Reader,
The day after Pearl Harbor, my father and all the male teachers at the high school where he taught went to the recruiting office to enlist. Dad was not accepted because he was married and had a child. To do his part for the war effort, he left teaching and went to work as an inspector at New York Ship in Gloucester, NJ. He claimed he got the job because he knew what the dotted lines on a blueprint meant, not because he knew what he was doing.
Later when men with wives and children were being gladly accepted by the military, Dad was again refused because he now had a defense-sensitive job. I remember going with my mother to watch the launching of one of the ships he had worked on. To my great surprise the boat slid down the skids into the water sideways.
War always brings sorrow and death. In Dad’s case, it took thirty-five years before the war got him and ten years of suffering before it claimed him.
“Asbestosis,” the doctor had said. “I’ll give you all the documentation you need to sue.”
“Why sue?” Dad asked. “First New York Ship no longer exists, but even if I could find some entity to hold accountable, why attack people who had no idea they were dealing in death? We thought asbestos was the greatest thing ever.”
There is no doubt that the asbestos that lined the bowels of the ships, the asbestos through which Dad walked regularly as he inspected the ships’ progress, saved many lives through its fire-retardant properties. No one knew then that it, like much in life, would prove to be a two-edged sword.
Those of us who live in peace owe much to those who serve, those on the battlefield blatantly in harm’s way, and those who, like Dad, more quietly offer their lives.
May He command His angels concerning you
To guard you in all your ways;
May they lift you up in their hands,
So that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
May He be with you in trouble,
May He deliver you and honor you.
—A prayer based on Psalm 91:11–12, 15
Gayle Roper
The authors would love to receive your comments on this book. Please send your thoughts to:
Both authors: authors@TFValor.com
Chuck Holton: chuck@TFValor.com
Gayle Roper: gayle@TFValor.com
Or visit the authors’ websites at: www.livefire.us and www.gayleroper.com.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ALLAH’S FIRE
published by Multnomah Publishers, Inc.
© 2006 by Charles W. Holton and Gayle Roper
Multnomah is a trademark of Multnomah Publishers, Inc., and is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The colophon is a trademark of Multnomah Publishers, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission.
For information:
MULTNOMAH PUBLISHERS, INC.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Holton, Chuck.
Allah’s fire : a novel / Chuck Holton & Gayle Roper.
p. cm. — (Task force valor ; bk. 1)
eISBN: 978-0-307-56276-0
1. Religious fiction. I. Roper, Gayle G. II. Title.
PS3608.O4944344A79 2006
813′.6—dc22
2005035663
v3.0_r2