“God expects more from you and me. We are His ambassadors. We are His anointed servants. If you marry her, you two can procreate to your hearts’ desire, but until then, you abstain.”
The conversation was awkward for Chris, and he guessed it was awkward for Reverend Luther, too, but he was grateful for Reverend Luther’s straight-shooting character and unflinching dedication. “Yes, sir. I’ll be careful.”
“Shall I pray?”
Chris nodded.
They bowed their heads, and Pastor Luther prayed to protect Chris from harm, both physical and spiritual. “Please keep all cruelty, hate, and murder out of Chris’s heart, even during battle…”
Chris had spent the whole night preparing for his journey back to black. After only a couple hours of sleep, he called a taxi that first took him to Pastor Luther’s home. In the dawn light, a spring wind graced new maple leaves with movement, and tree branches sent off an armada of flat fibers that whirled through the air like helicopters. Patches of fresh St. Augustine grass replaced the winter’s dead, and a cardinal pecked for food in the flowerbed where a small rainbow of petunias and lantanas bloomed. Chris rang the doorbell.
Pastor Luther’s wife answered the door. “Good morning, Chris. You just missed him. He left to visit Zeke Jackson in the hospital.”
“That’s all right. I just needed to drop some things off for him, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course not,” she said warmly. “I was expecting you.”
Chris nodded. “These are the keys to my house and car. And I’ve included some instructions and important papers in this file.” Chris handed the keys and file to her.
She smiled as she took them.
“My will is in the file, too,” Chris added as an afterthought.
Mrs. Luther froze for a moment, as if it was her first time sending a man off to combat. “Don’t worry about your things,” she said. “We’ll make sure they’re taken care of until you return.”
“Thank you.”
“We’ll miss you,” she added.
“I’ll miss y’all, too.”
She wrapped him in a hug. She started to release him but then hugged him again — tighter — as if she couldn’t make up her mind whether to keep hugging or let him go. Finally she released him. “Be safe,” she said.
Chris walked away with a wave good-bye, not knowing when — or if — he’d see her and her husband again. She waved back, standing in the doorway until Chris’s taxi pulled away.
He considered himself unworthy to be treated so kindly. As a SEAL, he worked on Sundays, deceived and killed people, but that was all part of the job, and he didn’t feel guilt over it. While in the Teams, he’d never gotten any tattoos and never drank. But he’d swore like a sailor and had sex with a number of women. In the Teams, the guys teased him about his high moral standards, but compared to Reverend and Mrs. Luther, he felt as far from the Lord as angels could fly.
It was reassuring to know that, in spite of all the darkness on the earth, there were still places where the sun shined. Although he felt sadness at leaving, he also felt a calm peace that what he was doing was right.
The taxi driver dropped him off at the La Quinta Inn. Inside, people were eating their continental breakfasts, checking out, and hurrying to catch their rides. Hannah was nowhere in sight.
Chris hadn’t eaten, and he didn’t know when he’d find another chance to eat, so he grabbed some breakfast, sat down in the back of the lobby, and ate — keeping his eye on the entrances and exits.
Always know your escape routes. Stay away from the windows in case a car bomb goes off.
His old mindset was coming back to him already.
He finished eating and looked at his watch: 0658. Only two minutes. Maybe I have the wrong hotel. He checked the sheet of paper. The hotel was right. Maybe I remembered the wrong time.
Then Hannah arrived at his table. “I’m happy you showed,” she said with that twinkle in her eye. “The taxi is on its way.”
A fresh burst of oxygen filled his lungs. “I was worried I had the wrong time.”
The cab took them to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, where they caught their flight to DC. As tempted as he was to engage Hannah while he had her alone, after such a busy night preparing for the trip and being unable to sleep, Chris needed a nap. Besides, he didn’t know when he’d have another opportunity to sleep.
His eyes grew heavier as he tried to relax, his body more and more lethargic. He had only one more thought, a remembrance of a Proverb, before he drifted off.
Be not afraid of sudden fear.
5
Chris woke up at 1335 as they touched down at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. He followed Hannah to the short-term parking lot, where they located her yellow Mustang convertible, and twenty minutes later, they arrived at the CIA headquarters in Langley. It wasn’t Chris’s first visit, but he couldn’t help spending a moment to get an overview of the layout. The front building was unchanged from the last time he’d been there, the original concrete structure still in place. The glass and steel New Headquarters Building, however, lay to the west. Conversations inside couldn’t vibrate the specialized glass, thwarting outsiders from eavesdropping with laser microphones.
Hannah parked in a side lot. She didn’t lead him through the front entrance, where the CIA seal was inlaid in the granite floor and a marble Memorial Wall stood with 103 stars carved into it.
Instead, she led him to a side entrance, where she showed the guard her ID, handed him her car keys, and signed in. Hannah gave Chris a temporary badge. He put it on and followed her through a maze of halls. Hannah worked for Special Operations Group (SOG), which conducted high-threat military and intelligence operations that the US government might deny knowledge of, such as when SEAL Team Six had raided bin Laden’s headquarters. SOG also utilized Army Delta Force operators and others. When Chris and his teammates had rescued Young, they’d been working with Hannah under SOG.
It was a world in which Chris had once been comfortable, but now he experienced reverse culture shock. He’d expected becoming a pastor was going to be different — attending religious classes at Harvard, praying often, reading the Bible daily, attending frequent church meetings, maintaining high moral standards, and so on — so he’d experienced little shock in the transition from SEAL to pastor. He hadn’t expected returning to the world of black ops would feel like a new experience, but he felt like an alien landing on a new planet. Even the pace of walking was faster than he remembered. He increased his speed to keep up with Hannah. They reached a room with an armed guard posted at the door. Hannah showed the guard her ID, and he opened the door for her.
Inside was a conference room with a feast laid out on the table. A slightly overweight man in his fifties wearing a suit jacket, slacks, and cowboy boots greeted Chris. “Howdy, Chris. Welcome to the family.” His fatherly voice rose and fell with a slow sweetness like molasses. “I’m Jim Bob Louve.”
Chris held out his hand to shake Jim Bob’s, but Jim Bob hugged him instead. The overabundance of affection caught Chris off guard.
“Thought you might be famished, and since I was having a late lunch,” Jim Bob said, “well, please, sit down and join me.”
Chris thanked him and took a seat at the table with Hannah. Another man already sat across from them looking at papers in a file.
Jim Bob seated himself at the head of the table. “Help yourself,” he said.
The other man continued to look at his papers rather than grab some lunch, but Jim Bob and Hannah reached for plates. Chris put fried chicken, cornbread, coleslaw, black-eyed peas, and fried okra on his — southern cooking was one of his favorites. He waited for Jim Bob to eat first.