Marc raced back. Beyond the gate, Lahm was already on his cell, hissing softly to his men at the back. Lahm’s forward team hustled quietly into position. Marc felt through the moaning guard’s pockets and came up with the keys. He fumbled until he found the one that fit the gate. He sprang back and Lahm’s men spilled inside.
The silence only intensified once they were inside the compound. The house, large and two-storied, had a pale stucco finish and a massive nail-studded front door. Light splashed over the rubble-strewn ground from the downstairs windows. Marc held the keys in a tight grip so as to keep them from jingling. Lahm lowered his phone and whispered, “The two rear windows show empty rooms.”
“Let me try the front door.”
Lahm spoke briefly into his phone, then nodded to Marc.
The door responded to the third key. Marc turned it slowly, then tried the handle. When the door shifted open, Lahm halted Marc with a finger on his arm. The major then pointed at the ground by Marc’s feet. Stay.
Marc knew better than to argue with a professional. He stepped out of the way.
Lahm gripped the door’s handle, lifted his cellphone, and hissed what Marc assumed was the Arabic version of green light.
Bedlam.
Chapter Fifteen
M ajor Lahm did not allow Sameh to enter the compound, not even when seven Palestinians were propped against the front wall, their hands manacled behind their backs. Sameh half listened to the policeman’s explanation of it being a crime scene. In truth, he had no real interest in going anywhere. The major said the children had all been found unharmed and were being rescued. The kidnappers were bathed in the light of the two Land Cruisers, which had been pulled up with headlights directed to glare upon where they sat cross-legged along the front wall. Sameh remained on the other side of the street, slightly apart from the cluster of onlookers. Marc Royce stood beside him. The man seemed calm, contained. Sameh might even have used the word detached, except for how his attention remained tightly focused on the house’s front gate.
Sameh asked, “Do you want to go inside?”
“Lahm ordered me to stay here. He’s right. I don’t speak the lingo and I can’t add anything. Besides which, Lahm and his men are pros.”
Sameh studied Marc. Up close the man revealed an odd aura, like bullets not yet fired. “I did not know a man could move as fast as you did. I saw it, and still I am not certain of what happened.”
Marc nodded, as though he had expected the question. “Back when I was growing up, Baltimore was mired in serious problems. A lot of the city was corrupt, including too many cops. Kickbacks were the name of the game. The kids I ran with, they hated and distrusted the police. I despised that attitude. I decided I was going to grow up and be the one honest cop in town.”
“But you became an intelligence agent.”
“By the time I went to college, Baltimore was changing. The people elected an honest mayor and city council. They asked the feds to come in and shake things up. The corrupt cops were mostly retired, or fired, or locked up. I studied criminology at university, and basically went looking for a challenge.”
Sameh pointed across the street, to where Marc’s attack still lingered in his mind. “And that performance I just witnessed?”
“There’s a dojo near my church. A gym where you practice hand-to-hand combat. After my wife got sick, I used to slip away whenever I could. Sometimes twice a day. If my heart was in it, I’d go into the church and pray. For my wife, for me, for God to change the lousy hand we’d been dealt. I tried to be honest with myself. If I was too angry to pray, I worked out.” Marc’s face tightened. “I worked out a lot.”
Sameh turned back to the house and the empty portal. Despite a lifetime of reservations, he felt a genuine and growing affection for this young man. “Are there many like you in America? I ask only because I lived there for a year and did not meet anyone who resembles you.”
“You were a student.” Marc offered a thin smile. “It takes a lot of practice to get where I am. A lot of hard knocks. Years, in fact.”
Sameh shook his head. Not in denial, but at how the American took a compliment and turned it into a reason for humility. “You are a man of faith. And a man of action. You have suffered great loss. But it has only opened you to the distress of others. You care deeply, it seems, for everyone and everything. Except your own life. You do not seem to have any personal aims. Even the way you come to be here, helping out a vanished friend and the retired boss who fired you. And now a family you don’t know whose child was snatched away.”
Marc turned his face away, offering a silhouette carved from stone against the darkness. He did not speak.
“I do not seek to criticize you. I am genuinely curious. Why are you here? What is it you personally want? Not just from this night. I ask because I want to trust you. As you do me.”
Sameh forced himself to stop. He knew he was babbling. But he was still nervous from what had just happened. And his nerves made him edgy. His words sounded confrontational to his own ears. As though he was in court, pestering a reluctant witness. “Forgive me. I should not have spoken as I did.”
“The truth is…” Marc stopped and swallowed, the sound so loud he might have been choking. “I basically stopped living when my wife died. Now I feel as though I’m being called back. To do more than just go through the motions. To reenter the world. To accept a real tomorrow.”
He turned toward Sameh. The night and the headlights turned his gaze into what seemed an open wound. “I just don’t know if I can.”
Sameh was still searching for a response when Major Lahm appeared in the doorway. Marc said, “Here they come.”
The police followed the major out. Each held one child or two. The young ones blinked in the headlights’ glare like it was full daylight. Most of them were scarcely more than toddlers. They clung like limpets to the police. They appeared fearful and exhausted and afraid to believe their ordeal was over.
Then one more policeman stepped through the doorway, carrying another little boy in his arms. Just another frightened little stranger. Only this boy recognized Sameh, or perhaps it was simply the way Sameh rushed over, arms outstretched, a caring face in a terrible time. The boy wailed and reached out. All the terror and pain of captivity were held in that cry.
Sameh swept the boy into an embrace. They were both crying. It did not matter whether the boy recognized him or not. His comforting arms and caring heart were all the child required.
– – All three females in Sameh’s household were still awake when Major Lahm dropped him off late that night. They met him with more questions than he had breath to answer. Thankfully, his exhaustion saved him from needing to explain precisely what had occurred. He wanted to avoid all such details in front of Leyla’s young daughter, Bisan, who was eleven. All he said was, they had found Abdul, and the boy was now back with his family. Oh, and a few other children had been rescued as well. How many? Sameh was asleep on his feet as he replied. Forty-six.
Chapter Sixteen
T he next morning, Sameh awoke feeling weary in a manner that went far beyond needing more rest. He had known many such times in years past, when chaos ruled and the darkness did not scatter even when the sun rose to its fiercest. But this morning was very different. As he rose from his bed, his mind flashed back to the reunion between Hassan’s family and their small son. Their joy had been so deeply overwhelming, Sameh had felt his chest threaten to explode. Even now, as he padded wearily about the bedroom and dressed, his spirit sang. He even had to shave around a smile.
To his surprise, the women did not feel compelled to pester him with more questions when he joined them in the kitchen. Which was extremely unusual. Miriam, his wife, was the most gently ferocious interrogator Sameh had ever known. She could winnow the truth from a cadaver. But she asked just one question, and that was on the drive to church. “This American, he will be joining us?”