SIXTY-TWO

As their car roared up the parking ramp, Joshua continued to give Pastor Paul Campbell a crash course on the hostage crisis with Cal. They pulled the car up to the ticket booth and quickly paid the parking fee. Then Campbell wheeled the car out onto Park Avenue.

“Over to my office. I’ll give you directions!” Joshua shouted.

“Not to Grand Central Station?” Campbell bulleted back. “I thought that’s where you said your meeting takes place! It’s only a few blocks from here.”

“No. We need to get over there in…” Joshua glanced at his watch…“exactly one hour and fifty-eight minutes…”

Campbell pulled his wrist watch off and handed it to Joshua.

“Why don’t you synchronize my watch with yours? That’s what you do in these kind of situations, right?”

“Yeah,” Joshua said and tried to force a smile, but it was tough to make that happen. Somewhere in the back of his head he was thinking of how far out he was in this crisis, way out there where the air was thin. Without a parachute. With almost no backup. But now it wasn’t his own life at stake, like it had been all of those years doing test piloting and spy-plane missions. Now it was Cal. He had to shut out the faint voice, the echo that threatened to knock him off kilter and jar his concentration. He had always been a deliberate, cold-as-steel decision maker. He had been all his life. But now the voice kept whispering doubt.

Are you sure you know what you’re doing? This is your son’s life… Joshua set Campbell’s watch and handed it back to him. Then he said, “With crosstown traffic we should be there in about twenty, thirty minutes. Okay, turn right at the first chance you get, and get off Park Avenue.”

Then Joshua called his office and the receptionist answered.

“This is Joshua. Who’s in the office now?” Joshua barked.

“Uh, just…well, let’s see…do you want to know who from R&D or…”

“No. Just tell if we have any visitors…”

“Those federal marshals came by. About two hours ago. I told them you were out, and I didn’t tell them anything else, I swear. Really. I told them that I absolutely didn’t know. That no one else knew. Couldn’t help them—”

Joshua broke in and said, “Okay. Do you have this number I’m calling from in front of you on the reception phone caller ID?”

“Yep, sure do.”

“Call me back the instant anyone arrives at my office.”

“Will do.”

“I’ll be blowing into the office shortly. I can’t be bothered or interrupted. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

Then he clicked off Rocky’s Allfone.

“I know you’re a praying man,” Joshua said to Campbell.

“I am.”

“I need you to pray that Cal gets rescued.”

“I already have.”

“And please make it good.”

Then there was a pause as Joshua ran his hand through his hair as he looked out the window. Joshua added, “I’ve got a decision to make. In just a short time…”

“You mean the part about sending the email…”

“No. I already know what I’m doing about that. I’ve got the documents picked in my head. Enough to let this guy know I’ve got what he wants. But nothing that will give the bad guys the technology they need to replicate the RTS.”

“Then what?”

“It’s the other stuff I’m worried about. The full set of protocols. The schematics. The exact specifications for the laser functions. The data-capturing module. The software for remote reading of incoming missile-guidance systems.”

“So that’s what would enable them to duplicate what you’ve done—”

“No question. If I give them those documents, our enemies could set up a missile-defense system against the U.S. very quickly. They could not only create their own defense that could return our missiles back to us, but they could figure out how to bypass our RTS system if it ever gets implemented. And deliver nukes to our shores that would be unstoppable.”

“You’re the weapons expert, I’m not. But doesn’t America have the technology edge on all of this anyway?”

“Look, everybody thinks that,” Joshua said with a sharp edge to his voice. “The dirty little secret is that research and development have been pretty much halted with President Corland’s edict against any ‘exotic new missile-defense systems.’ The Department of Defense has had its hands tied. That’s why my RTS laser has become so controversial in the political circles. It makes Corland’s Administration look bad. It falls in his forbidden ‘exotic’ category, yet it saved New York City. So it became a kind of embarrassment. Can you believe that? This whole thing is so stinking, rotten political…”

“So, what’s your plan? With Cal, I mean, and the RTS documents?”

Joshua looked over at the pastor. He wished he had his Roundtable assembled at that moment. The whole gamut of experts and patriots sitting around the table with him. Advisors. Friends. Instead, he was stuck in the car with this Christian minister who was way out of his league. But it would eat up precious time to try to loop in the others. And then there could still be a chance of that somehow being leaked to the kidnapper. Since they’d already had a breach of security on the Roundtable, with the lawyer Allen Fulsin, could there be others?

Joshua knew he had to overcome his pride and his “my way or the highway” approach. At least the pastor was a good guy, intelligent, and cared enough to stick his neck out and get involved.

Then a thought crossed his mind. Funny it hadn’t hit him immediately. This guy knows I’m technically a fugitive from justice right now. Yet here he is driving me around in his car. Helping me out. Geez, that could be potentially damaging to his position as a high-profile clergyman. Gotta give the guy credit for that…

“Pastor, I’m on the horns of a terrible dilemma.”

Campbell nodded and waited for more as they pulled up to a stoplight.

Joshua continued. “I give this guy the RTS documents, then my nation is put at peril. I swore on my life I would never let something like that happen. Never. Everything in me fights against that thought. But if I don’t…well you know what I am facing. I’d never do anything to hurt Cal. I can’t…but I just…I don’t, uh…”

Then Joshua’s voice trailed off as his throat choked up and his eyes filled up with tears. He turned away and looked absently out the car window as he tried to pull himself together.

“I try to imagine what you’re going through,” Campbell said. “But let’s face it. I can’t even pretend. Can’t even come close.”

He pulled the car forward after the light changed and kept driving. Campbell was looking ahead, studying the street signs while addressing Joshua at the same time. “How well do you know your Bible?” he asked.

Joshua shrugged. “Some, not as much as I should. Not nearly as much as Abby—”

“The story of Abraham and Isaac. Remember it?”

“Uh, I don’t know,” Joshua said unenthusiastically.

“God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. As an offering. As a show of faith…”

“Yeah. Right.” Then an instant later Joshua shot back with, “So what’s the point? That I should help sacrifice my own son? Is that it? You’re kidding, right?”

“No,” Campbell said calmly. “I mean the other part of the story.”

“What other part?”

“How it ended.”

Joshua was silent. His eyes were glancing vacantly out the window, but he was riveted on the pastor’s words. Then he asked, “Meaning what?”

“God stops Abraham’s hand. Instead, God says that Abraham has passed the test. Then God shows Abraham something that has been tangled up in the bushes…”

“What?”

“It was a ram. God provides the ram. Caught in the thicket of the bushes a couple of feet away from Abraham. God saves the boy and provides His own ram for the sacrifice.”

Joshua finally turned away from the window and looked over at Campbell. “What are you getting at?”

“God is an expert in rescue.”

Then a moment went by while Joshua thought about that.

Campbell added, “Maybe we need to pray for God to provide a ram for us.”

Now their car was only a few blocks away from Joshua’s office.

Joshua asked, “So, why didn’t God make Abraham go through with it? Killing his own son as a test of faith? Could have forced him to do it…”

Campbell clicked on his turn signal and pulled into the turn lane for the avenue that led directly to Joshua’s office.

“Good question,” Campbell finally said. “But God would only allow one Son to die as a sacrifice for the sins of others. And that would happen a couple of thousand years later. When God’s own Son would come to earth as an itinerant preacher and die on a Roman cross in Jerusalem. Dying for me. And for you.” Then as Joshua’s office building came into view two blocks away, Campbell added, “And dying for your son, Cal, too.”

Joshua fell quiet.

The car pulled into the private parking area reserved for “president.” The two men scrambled out of the car and started sprinting across the parking lot. But then Joshua started slowing down, almost to a stop. His eyes were fixed on something somewhere, but it wasn’t clear to Campbell what that was or what was going on.

Campbell slowed down to match Joshua’s pace.

Now Joshua was standing still.

Campbell had to ask the obvious. “What is it?”

Joshua looked up and then saw Campbell’s face as if he had just noticed him.

“Well,” Joshua started to say. There was almost a flicker of a bitter smile in the corners of his mouth. But there was something else in Joshua’s look. A dreadful, serious recognition of something down deep. The kind of thing only birthed when a person is in the very hottest place inside the furnace of affliction. “I’ve just figured something out.”

“What?”

“Where we can find the ram.”