If that wasn’t enough, the Wall Street Journal was reporting that in light of the unification of Europe into the European Union centered in Brussels and the fact that virtually the entire Middle East had recently united its government in Babylon as the United States of Eurasia, several senior MacPherson administration Cabinet officials were urging the president to call for the political, economic, and military unification of North, Central, and South America into a “United States of the Americas.”
What’s more, the treasury secretary had reportedly had lunch with the president in June, urging him to embrace a single regional currency known as the “Amero” as a replacement for the traditional American dollar. One senior administration official who asked not to be named told the Journal that every government in the Organization of American States — with the exception of Cuba and Venezuela — was quietly backing such a political and economic unification, phased in over the next decade or so.
“The only way the U.S. can compete and succeed in the twenty-first century is to create a trade bloc comparable in size and muscle to the emerging economic behemoth in Brussels and the emerging oil superpower in Babylon,” one high-ranking U.S. official told the Journal. “Will it be controversial here at home? Absolutely. But we have no other choice.”
Controversial didn’t even begin to describe it. Explosive was more like it. Such a proposal threatened to rip apart the GOP. Several prominent social conservative leaders worried openly about the loss of U.S. sovereignty and a never-ending flood of new immigrants from south of the border, even though many fiscal conservatives loved the idea of expanding free trade and enhancing economic efficiencies.
None of these ideas or the varied reactions to them was the point, however. The point was that given how close the race for the White House was, and how much heat had been generated by various rumors swirling in the press, interest in the president’s speech that night was running high, making an already “high value” target that much more tempting. The Los Angeles Times estimated eighty to ninety million Americans would tune in to hear the president’s speech, along with as many as a billion people around the globe. No one had to tell the newly appointed director of central intelligence just how devastating an attack on the Republican National Convention would be on a fragile American psyche, or on the U.S. and global economy, still recovering from last year’s so-called Day of Devastation and oil prices that remained well over $300 a barrel.
Tracker picked up the phone on his desk and hit speed dial.
“Get me Air Force One,” he told his chief of staff. “Now.”
4
The nurse was now yelling something in Arabic.
Suddenly two more nurses and an orderly rushed to Erin’s side and whisked her into an examining room. Bennett tried to follow them but they refused him entry. They insisted he remain outside, then shut the door in his face. A moment later, he watched two doctors race down the hallway and into the examining room, and for a split second he was able to catch a glimpse, however fleeting, of the feverish activity inside — the needles, the monitors, the battery of tests — before the door slammed shut again.
He had done all he could, Bennett kept telling himself. He had gotten his wife to the clinic. He had gotten her into the care of doctors with years of trauma experience. But was it going to be enough? It had to be. The alternative was unthinkable. Still, as hard as he tried to console himself, as desperately as he tried to convince himself that everything was going to be fine, the bitter truth was that he had no idea, and he hated this feeling of powerlessness that was intensifying by the minute.
Bennett stared at the closed door for a moment. He had never felt so scared in his life. Not in Eli Mordechai’s house in Jerusalem the night he’d been shot by terrorists. Not in Gaza the day his convoy had been attacked by radical jihadists. Not in Moscow during the coup or even on the day of the firestorm. Those were different. Then, he’d feared for his own life. Now he feared for hers, and feared what he’d become without her.
No one had ever loved him like Erin did. Nor had he ever loved a woman so deeply, so completely. He loved the sound of her voice and the way she laughed at his jokes. He loved the touch of her hand on his face and the way the light glistened off the diamond he’d given her the night he’d proposed.
When he was in a crowd — unloading supplies off the U.N. relief trucks before dawn or feeding refugees in the mess tent morning, noon, and night or handing out toys to the children on various holidays — his eyes always seemed to be searching for hers. He loved to watch her serving others, caring for others with a love that welled up from somewhere so deep within her soul. He loved the delight she had when she caught him looking her way. And he loved how she could sense the longing in his eyes and how, as soon as she could, as soon as her task was complete, she would work her way back through the crowd to be with him, knowing that he simply couldn’t be apart from her for too long without being overcome with a sadness he couldn’t quite explain.
When she was away from his side for more than a few hours, he physically ached for her in a way that would have embarrassed him to tell anyone but her, and sometimes even her. It felt odd to need someone so intensely. Was that normal? Did other men feel this way about their wives? When they were together — private and alone — the world lost all meaning. All he wanted to do was play with her chestnut brown hair and kiss those soft lips and gaze into those dazzling green eyes until their souls sparked and sizzled, and their desire turned to hunger, and their hunger turned to passion, and their passion turned to heat, and they could finally melt again into one and drift away for hours, peaceful and secure.
To Bennett, it still defied all reason that God in His mercy had created him for her and her for him before the foundations of the world. Some of his friends didn’t believe that. Bennett himself hadn’t always. Not that long ago, he hadn’t even been sure if there was a God. But Erin’s love was living proof of the existence of God. Of this he had no doubt. She was the miracle God had used to open his eyes to the presence of a higher love and bigger plan than he had ever dreamed possible. He only wished he’d met her sooner, or that he’d allowed himself, at the very least, to fall in love with her sooner, faster, deeper.
How blind he had been — how blind and how stupid. Why hadn’t he asked her out when they’d first met? Why hadn’t he insisted they elope immediately? How many days had he wasted alone? How many nights had he needlessly surrendered to cold sheets and a lonely heart?
In all his life, he had never met anyone like Erin. He found himself intoxicated by her passion for Christ and her compassion for others. She didn’t care about money or fame or power (Bennett’s “triune god,” he had joked back in the days he’d worked on Wall Street). She was constantly giving her time for those who needed her most, to a fault even. Since arriving at the camp, she’d worked twelve- to fourteen-hour days — sometimes longer — with minimal breaks and had taken only one weekend off. She always got up before he did, often before dawn, and hated naps. “Sleep is for suckers,” she’d laugh and then drag his sorry body out of bed every morning. He was starting to feel his age. She never did. He was ready for the end to come. She wanted to seize every moment and make it count for eternity.