No, Rachael thought as she sat in the mud as she had day after day after day, her hatred hadn’t disappeared all at once. But somewhere along the line she had forgiven her captors. And now when she prayed for Candido Subing and the others she truly did mean it from the heart.
Rachael looked down and smiled. She still had things to be thankful for. Small things maybe, but gifts nonetheless. For one thing, she could tell it was daytime. The drawstring at her throat hadn’t been tightened all the way and she could see the light on her chest. Lord, I thank you for the light, she said silently, and the new prayer made her realize how many of God’s wonders she overlooked each day. God could make something good out of anything, no matter how evil its original intent might be at the hands of man. And one of the good things that had come out of their captivity was just that—she no longer took such things as the sun going up and coming down for granted.
There was some kind of rustling on the other side of the barn and Rachael’s ears perked. A quick image of Jim Worden flew through her mind. In less than a heartbeat her mind’s eye relived the horrifying death she had witnessed. She saw Jim kneeling on the ground, facing her and the others. He was smiling—he said something—she couldn’t remember what at the moment—then Candido Subing raised his sword and Jim’s head fell from his body. Seconds later his body fell forward while his head fell to the side. There was blood everywhere, but Jim was still smiling.
Rachael suddenly realized that she was crying just as she had when the horrible death had actually occurred.
Rachael bit her lip with her teeth but the tears still flowed down her cheeks. Did Jim’s brutal death serve some higher purpose that she couldn’t understand? Rachael felt herself begin to tremble. She felt as if she might be on the verge of a breakdown. First the tears. Now she was shaking. She was about to scream when she felt the hand on her shoulder.
As suddenly as it had come, the trembling stopped, her eyes dried up and she felt the love of God within her once more. The Lord had given her the sign she’d asked for through her husband. John, sitting next to her, had somehow worked a hand free and now it squeezed her shoulder reassuringly.
Rachael leaned her head to the side, resting her cheek against the back of her husband’s hand. It was God at work. God answering their prayers. God giving her a blessing.
Rachael’s cheek still rested on the hand when she heard the rickety wooden door on the other side of the barn slide open. She recognized the voice of Candido Subing shouting orders to his men. She held her breath and knew the other missionaries were doing the same. Although it had been apparent since the beginning that Subing was the leader, he was rarely here in this hiding place. But when he did show up, things happened. And while all of those things had been bad so far, Rachael knew that Subing would also be the one to tell them if they were about to be released.
Boots sloshed through the mud toward the five missionaries. Rachael heard a sigh and then a moan as hoods were lifted off faces. When the sack was jerked from her head she turned in time to see Reynaldo Taboada pull the hood from John. She was glad it was Reynaldo. He seemed different than the others, not as mean. He never mistreated them for the fun of it like some of the guards did and there seemed something almost sad about the man.
“Thank you,” Rachael whispered to John as soon as the terrorist had turned away.
“For what?” John asked, his face looking puzzled.
Before she could thank him for the hand on her shoulder Subing stepped forward to face his hostages. He was obviously about to speak to them; the last time he had done so had ended with the murder of Jim Worden. Rachael’s eyes scanned the area behind him for any sign of video equipment. She saw none and that gave her hope that the horror might not be repeated.
Subing cleared his throat. “I understand,” he said, “that in America there is a game in which someone says, ‘I have both some good news and some bad.’ First, I will give you the good news. America has sent new agents—CIA, I am sure—to look for you.” He cackled sardonically, then spit into the mud. “Now. For the bad news. They will not find you. And the worst news of all for some of you…” He let his voice trail off to build tension. “Is that to make their hunt more difficult, I am going to separate you into three groups.”
Rachael felt a chill go down her spine as she and her husband looked at each other, then back at Subing. Three groups. Five of them left. That would surely mean two hostages in two groups, one in the third. Surely, Subing would allow them to stay together. Even a man as misguided as he had to retain some compassion hidden deep within his soul.
The men of the Liberty Tigers trudged through the mud. Two of them grabbed Roger Ewton and dragged him toward the door. Two more lifted Kim Tate from where she sat next to Rachael, and then another two Tigers grabbed her and hauled her to her feet. Rachael suddenly realized that separating her from her husband was exactly what Subing planned to do.
“John!” Rachael screamed out, and heard him cry back, “Rachael! No!”
John tried to struggle to his feet, but a muddy boot kicked him in the face and he fell back to the ground. Rachael’s husband rose again, this time getting as high as his knees before one of the men hit him with the wooden end of his gun in the side of the head.
The rough hands grasped Rachael’s shoulders and pushed her toward the door. When she tried to turn back someone punched her in the stomach and she felt the air rush from her lungs. As she started to fall she cast a look over her shoulder and saw John trying to get up yet again, but with his ankles still bound and his hands tied to his waist it was futile.
Gasping for air, Rachael was dragged out of the barn into the bright sunlight. As soon as she caught her breath again she began to struggle. But her efforts were as ineffective as John’s had been. The terrorists pulled, pushed and carried her toward two trucks parked just outside. Rachael doubled her efforts to strike the men with her elbows and even snapped her teeth at an arm that got too close.
“John!” she cried one final time as she was lifted into one of the trucks next to Kim Tate, and then the hood was pulled back down over her eyes.
It was only then, as she sat impotently listening to the truck engine start and feeling the wheels beneath her begin to roll, that the miraculousness of the sign God had given her earlier suddenly struck her. She had just watched John try three times to get to his feet and come after her. Three times he had been unable to do so, or to defend himself against the boots and rifle butts of the terrorists because his hands were still tied to his waist. Which meant he had not worked a hand free earlier as she’d thought, and it couldn’t have been his hand comforting her by squeezing her shoulder.
But a hand had been there, warm and loving, just the same.
THE REVOLVER in the elderly man’s hand looked like an ancient Spanish Star. The rifling, Bolan suspected, had been burned out before the Executioner was born. Or perhaps the old man at the top of the steps was simply a poor shot. Whatever the reason, although he was less than ten feet away, when the man Bolan assumed was Mario Subing pulled the trigger, the shot missed.
The antique wheel gun exploded almost in the Executioner’s face. But the shot struck to his side, splintering the already rotten wood of the handrail above the steps and causing it to collapse in pieces over the staircase.
Bolan hadn’t slowed at the sight of the revolver and now ducked his head as he continued to charge up the steps. Before the wrinkled, white-haired man on the landing could pull the trigger again, he thrust his head under the gun and into the man’s chest.
The Executioner’s force drove both men back through the doorway into the one-room stilt house; they dropped to the floor in a jumble of arms and legs. But old as he might be, frail as he might look, Mario Subing still managed to hold on to the gun as Bolan came down on top of him. And even after the Executioner had clamped the fingers of one hand so tight around his wrist that the dry old bone threatened to snap, he strained to maneuver the barrel back around at the big American.
Bolan didn’t want to break Mario Subing’s arm and he didn’t want the old man to break it himself as he struggled.