The Women of Jacob’s Mountain Boxed Set

by Hining, Deborah;

  There were two jeeps sitting under a sausage tree, neither of which had a key in the ignition, above the visor, in the ashtray, or under the front seat. Finally, Sally Beth said, “Prissy, if you help me push this thing over that rise there, I can get it started. Come on, it’s not uphill too much, and it isn’t far.” She leaped into the driver’s seat and disengaged the emergency brake, then put the gearshift into the neutral position.

  Together, the two struggled to push the jeep up a short incline until it sat poised at the top. Sally Beth got behind the wheel. “Okay, just give her a little shove,” she said, putting her foot on the ground to help push. The jeep rocked, rolled forward a few inches, and began to roll slowly downward. Sally Beth drew her foot in, shut the door, and when the vehicle picked up a little more speed, she popped the clutch. It started.

  “I’m going to drive over to those jugs and we can try to get one in the back seat.” She turned the jeep around, drove the thirty feet to the water station, and together, the two managed to wrestle a nearly-full container of water onto the back seat. Keeping the engine running, they looked into the other tents until they found some trail mix, candy, and a few granola bars. Priscilla stuffed some bananas into her pockets, then ducked into another tent and came out carrying several more rifles.

  “You never know,” she said, as she threw them into the back seat beside the water jug.

  And then they were off, not knowing exactly where they were, but aware that the only safe place to be was south of the border. Sally Beth squinted at the sun and took off in a generally southward direction.

  “I don’t think we should stay on the main road,” she said. “The army will be all over the place, and we’ll be stopped at the border. Maybe we should head east, toward the lake. Maybe we can get a boat, or at least some help.”

  Priscilla shrugged. “Sure. I think I remember this area. When my family was killed and my village burned, I walked through here. It doesn’t feel like we are too far from water.”

  “Your family was killed?”

  “Yes. Amin’s army, the most horrible men in the world. They live by killing and looting.” She fell silent, watching the grassy plains roll by. Sally Beth wanted to keep Priscilla from dwelling too much on the horrors of her past. This day alone held enough horrors.

  “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” she said softly.

  Priscilla smiled. “Plenty sufficient. But the day they raped and killed my mother and sisters and tortured my father and brothers to death was more evil. My father had put me up in the rafters to hide, and it was so bad I couldn’t keep quiet. If I hadn’t killed them, they would have done the same to me.”

  “You’ve killed men before?’

  “Three of them. I just wish I had done it before they did what they did.”

  Sally Beth wanted to ask her how she had managed that, but that would have meant asking her to relive that terrible time. She wondered how much Priscilla suffered for the things she had seen and done. “Thank you,” Sally Beth said softly. “I thought I would try to save you, but I was no match for those men. If it hadn’t been for you, I would be dead, or worse.”

  Priscilla smiled at her. “I knew you would need me,” she said softly. “Jesus told me.” Her face was the sweet, plump-cheeked face of a child, but her eyes were old and wise. Behind the wisdom lurked a hundred years of suffering.

  Twenty-One

  The Jumpoff, Swallowtail Gap, West Virginia

  Howard Graves gripped the phone tightly. When he spoke, he struggled to keep his voice calm. “Thank you, sir. You know where to reach me if you hear anything, anything at all. We appreciate what you are doing.” He hung up the receiver, his face grim. Geneva took one look at it and fell into her husband’s arms, sobbing. He tried to console her, but even he felt despair. “Don’t give up hope, sweetheart. They still could have gotten away.”

  “How? The men you sent to find them can’t go farther north. I can tell even the people at the mission have given up hope.” She tried to stifle her sobs, but the thought of Sally Beth, Lilly, and John being in the hands of those murderers sent a spiral of anguish through her. “What did the State Department say?”

  Howard Graves shook his head. “There’s not much they can do at this point. It’s a local war, even though the Ugandans have overrun the Kagera region, and we can’t get involved. Anyway, the army is pretty much out of control, even if they could talk some sense into Idi Amin. I think the best we can hope for is that they are in the hands of some mercenaries who will hold them for ransom. They have to know that America doesn’t like its citizens murdered.” He averted his eyes. People in the throes of this war would not be concerned about the plight of Americans. Even mercenaries may not have enough of their wits about them to think about profiting from the return of hostages.

  “What did they say when you told them we’d pay a million dollars to get them back?” She did not care now who knew she and Chap were wealthy. All she cared about was finding her loved ones safe.

  “Well, it got their attention, but…” He trailed off, feeling helpless. He had not told her what he had heard about the brutality of the Ugandan army. Uncontrolled, undisciplined soldiers had been responsible for the horrific deaths of thousands of civilians. Many hundreds more, including the pastor of the mission church where Sally Beth had been living, had been marched to camps where they were held for ransom or sold into slavery. They had stolen all the livestock and burned and looted every building and vehicle they could find well to the south of the Kagera River. If it had not been for the timely arrival of the former special services men they had hired to look for Sally Beth, Lilly, John, and Phil, every person at the mission would have been slaughtered or kidnapped. He was at least grateful for that small mercy.

  Seeing how distracted Geneva was, Howard Graves longed to put his arms around her, if only to comfort her, but he kept still while Howard Knight pulled her close, murmuring into her hair. He had long ago lost that right, and although he regretted it with all his heart, he was glad that Geneva was well loved by her husband.

  “Darling,” said Howard Knight. “We just have to pray now, and hope the guys we hired can track them into Uganda.”

  She shook her head, sobbing, “Chap, I can’t stand this!”

  He held still for a moment, bending his head toward hers. “How are you feeling, love?” he asked tenderly.

  She looked at him, aghast. “What? Awful! They could all be dead.”

  “No, I mean, how are you feeling? He moved his hand slowly down to her belly, cradling it for a brief moment.

  “Oh. Fine, I guess.”

  “Then, let’s go. We might as well be there, where we can get news a little quicker, and get to them quicker when they are found. Let’s go to Kenya, to John’s place, and wait there.

  “Oh, Chap! You mean it? We can just go?”

  He shrugged. “Why not?” He turned to Howard Graves. “You reckon you can get us seats on the next Concorde? We’ll go to Paris, then to Kenya from there.”

  Howard Graves looked thoughtful. “We’ll need visas,” he said at last as he reached for the phone. “Guess it’s time to call on our friend Senator Byrd again. And let’s hope there are three seats available on the Concorde this week. Otherwise, it will be a long flight.

  Geneva looked at him sharply. “You’re going to go, too?” She had been grateful for Howard’s Washington, DC connections and his guidance throughout this ordeal, but this was exceptionally generous.

  Howard Graves smiled sadly. “Yeah, well, as pathetic as this sounds, outside of my mother, your family is the only one I have. And I guess you could say John is something of a brother. I don’t want to lose any of them.”

  Somewhere in southern Uganda

  Sally Beth tried to keep to the minor roads, veering eastward at every opportunity. Getting to the lake would most likely be their safest path, although she didn’t know how they would get far enough into the lake to cross the border into Tanzania without b
eing caught.

  Lord, send a miracle.

  The road was just a wide dirt path, now no more than a rocky, eroded mess. The rain and clouds had cleared, but the mud was so deep in places she tried to keep to the grassy shoulders. When the field beside them flattened out into plain savannah, Sally Beth slowed to a crawl, easing the car up the bank to leave the road altogether. Driving through grass would be easier than slogging through the mud.

  She had just made the top of a rise when something glinting in the sunshine caught her eye. She slowed to stare at the object nearly hidden in the long grass about twenty yards away. Something told her to go see what it was. Turning the jeep, she made her way cautiously, bouncing and staggering across the grassland toward it.

  It was John’s plane, sitting lightly in the savannah grass, fresh and white in the morning sun. Leaving the jeep idling in neutral, Sally Beth leaped out, sprinted to the plane, and jerked open the door.

  If he were alive, the only proof of it lay in the recesses of her certain, sealed heart, the heart that forbade him to die. He lay back in the pilot’s seat, his face, flung sideways, the color of cold ashes. A dark, bloody bandage wrapped around his thigh was sticky with blood, and so much more blood was spilled over the seat and floor, she knew he had lost enough to kill a smaller man. The large bruise on his forehead spreading out toward his cheek served as a grim reminder of what had taken place the night before when the Ugandans had attacked the mission. Kneeling on the floor, her pulse buffeting her temples, she placed her fingertips at his neck, feeling for any life-rhythm there.

  The pulse surged so faintly she wondered if she were imagining it, but his flesh was warm, and when she lifted his arm, it fell back limp; no sign of rigor mortis, no stench of death in the air. Just the strong, coppery smell of blood permeated the cabin of the plane.

  “Is he...?” asked Priscilla, her voice strained with worry.

  “He’s alive,” she murmured, overcome with relief, “but barely.” She looked at the bandage on his thigh. “He’s bled a lot.” Still watching, still pressing his artery for the comfort of his sustained pulse, she said, “Prissy, will you get that canteen?”

  Priscilla turned back to the jeep while Sally Beth gathered John in her arms, holding him close, stroking his hair, and begging God to intervene.

  Oh, God! Please don’t let him die. I’m sorry. I can’t give him up. You saved Prissy, you saved me, so now please save him. Let him live. I’ll leave him alone; I’ll let him love whoever he wants, but please, let him live!

  She knew this was her fault. If she had not begged him to stay the night with her, he would have taken a few more people to safety, and he would have stayed overnight in Bukoba. Because of her selfishness, he might die, and several people who stayed at the mission might be dead because of her as well. She held him tightly, rocking him, stunned by the pain of her loss, of the realization that she must, after all, be sorry for the sweetness of the night before. She kissed him, then held his head to her chest and simply held on, as if her own life could stretch across the thin membranes of skin between them and bring him back to her.

  Priscilla returned with the water. Sally Beth tried to dribble some between John’s white lips, but it trickled out the sides of his mouth, then he coughed without regaining consciousness. Sally Beth looked around frantically.

  “We have to get him help.” She looked at the open emergency kit on the seat next to him, but there was little in there to do any good: some bandages, syringes, tubing, ointments, sutures, and other basic necessities. Several seconds of rummaging yielded nothing, until her eyes landed on the most obvious thing there: the cooler that Dr. Sams had placed underneath the back seat. Somehow, John had missed this when he unloaded the supplies they had sent to the hospital in Bukoba.

  She yanked it out, opened it, moved aside the ice packets, and breathed a prayer of gratitude. Just underneath a layer of ice was a plastic bag mostly full of her own blood. Dr. Sams had not taken a full unit, just enough to make her believe she was contributing. But still, it was something, and it was O negative, the universal donor. She heard herself insisting. Go ahead. Somebody could really need this, and I’m as healthy as a mule.

  Thank You, God. You told me to do this. You made this happen. Now I know You plan for him to live!

  “Prissy, you have to help,” she said as she grabbed some tubing and a syringe from the first aid kit and took hold of John’s arm. “I can’t do it by myself.”

  She connected one end of tubing to the needle from the syringe and the other to the packet of blood while Priscilla tied a tourniquet around John’s arm and slapped at it until a faint blue line appeared. Sally Beth carefully threaded the needle into the nearly invisible vein and held up the packet of blood. “I’m sorry this is cold, John, but maybe it will bring you around a little quicker.”

  They waited in agony as the sun crept higher in the sky and the day grew warm and humid. Priscilla fanned John while Sally Beth slowly nursed the blood into his vein. As she watched, her heart cheered when the lifeblood began to pink his lips and cheeks. At last, his eyes fluttered open.

  “John, what’s your blood type?”

  He heard Sally Beth’s voice, but he did not recognize the terrible-looking person gazing down at him. It was a woman, he thought, with wisps of Sally Beth’s long, silvery hair, but the face, blue, red, swollen, and misshapen, was like no one he had ever seen before. The left eye was a mere slit in a puffy blue and red socket.

  “What happened to your face?”

  “What is your blood type? You’ve lost a lot of blood. We need to replace it.”

  “AB negative.”

  The hideous face disappeared, and in its place came the shining black face of Priscilla.

  “Prissy,” he said. “Are you alive?”

  She smiled. “Yeah. Are you?”

  “I guess. I hurt enough. I’m cold.”

  The blackened, swollen face with the silvery hair was back. Prissy rubbed his arms to warm him.

  “Okay, I’m going to give you another unit of blood,” said Sally Beth, ripping out the tubing from the empty packet and inserting it into another one. He smiled. He had missed Sally Beth’s voice. His arm grew cold again, and he winced, but within minutes, his vision began to clear, and he realized that the hideous face he had seen swimming above him belonged to Sally Beth’s voice. He gasped and tried to sit up.

  “Careful! Stay still.”

  “Sally Beth.”

  “Yes, John. It’s me.”

  “What happened to your face?”

  “Ugandans. Same thing as happened to yours.” She placed her hand over the left side of her face and smiled, and he thought he had never seen anyone so beautiful.

  After the second unit of blood, John was still weak, but able to sit up, then get out of the plane to stretch out on the grass. “I could give you another unit,” said Sally Beth. “Or we can just get out of here. How do you feel?”

  “I feel—” John was cut off by Prissy’s urgent voice.

  “They’re coming!”

  Sally Beth stood up. From the road came the distinct sound of motorcars. Looking out to the curve back to the north, she saw a line of army vehicles coming into view. “Oh, Lord, have mercy! Quick, get him back in the plane.” She jerked open the door and hustled him in. Priscilla jumped into the back while Sally Beth hurried around to the pilot’s seat. Without going through the checklist, she attempted to start the engine, but it failed to fire up.

  “Pump the throttle a couple of times,” advised John. “Forget the primer.” She gave the throttle three good pumps, then tried again and shouted for joy when the engine caught.

  The entire line of army vehicles halted in the road as Sally Beth spun the plane eastward, then several jeeps broke away, lurching across the road, coming toward them fast. She leaned into the throttle as hard as she could, and slowly, agonizingly, the plane began to widen the distance between them and the convoy of trucks and jeeps. Behind them, guns sang their d
readed songs. They heard their chortle and laughter, the ringing of lead on aluminum and steel.

  Looking ahead, Sally Beth saw the glimmer of Lake Victoria not one hundred feet ahead and rushing at her fast. Instinctively she slowed, but John slapped her hand away and forced the throttle forward, then, as they rolled forward, their speed increasing, he lifted the yoke, and they sailed out over the blue waters, not more than a few feet above the surface of the lake. The plane dipped slightly before John lifted the yoke higher. They slowly gained altitude as bullets ricocheted off and into the plane.

  “Ahhh!” moaned John. “I’ve been hit, again.” He grabbed at his right arm just above the elbow.

  Sally Beth looked back to see the jeeps bristling with guns firing at them, but by now, they were out of range, high up and over the lake. She grabbed the controls away from John. Prissy sat mute in the back, hunkered in the floorboard between the seats, her arms over her head.

  “Are you okay, Prissy?” shouted Sally Beth.

  Her head came up. “Yes, but there are holes all over back here. I can see daylight through the plane.”

  “John, how bad are you hurt?”

  “Not bad. I think this is where I get to say, ‘It’s only a flesh wound’.” He almost laughed. “How many units of the AB negative do we have on board?”

  Sally Beth was not in the mood to joke. “None, John, so you can darn well quit bleeding!” She grimaced and tightened her hold on the yoke.

  “And did you bring any fuel?” His voice had lost its lightness.

  “What?”

  He pointed to the fuel gage. It showed a near-empty tank, and the indicator was moving rapidly. “We’re losing fuel. They must have hit the tank. We have to set her down. Now!” He wrenched the controls back away from her and lowered the nose, banking back toward the lakeshore.

  “Don’t go back!” shouted Sally Beth.