The Heaven Trilogy (150 page)

“No. Take me instead,” Tanya said. She had lifted her arms to form a cross.

The Arab swiveled his head and lifted the pistol to her head in one smooth motion. The world fell to blurred images. Tanya shifted wide blue eyes to Shannon and they poured love into him.

She was giving her life for him!

Shannon’s mind lost coherence then. He roared to his feet, snapping the line as he did so. The jungle was screaming.

His head hit Abdullah’s back and the man’s gun bucked.
Boom!

From the corner of his eye, Shannon saw Tanya standing, her arms spread wide, her head tilted back. Abdullah had shot her! He’d shot Tanya!

The jungle was still screaming, long wails of desperation screeching around his ears.

And then the Arab hit the ground and Shannon crashed down on top of him. He shoved his knees forward, so that he straddled the man’s chest. His left hand had found Abdullah’s black hair. He snatched his bowie from Abdullah’s belt.

Then it occurred to him that the screaming came from his own throat, not the jungle.

For a moment Shannon thought that he had died as well. His soul had been sucked clean of his body, leaving only a vast empty hole. But he knew that couldn’t be true, because he was still screaming. “Noooo! Noooo!” Just that, over and over.

Only then did he realize that Tanya wasn’t falling. The realization snatched the wind from him and he pulled up.

For a moment Abdullah shifted out of his focus. He jerked his head up and he stared into Tanya’s blue eyes. She lowered her arms.

She was alive. Shannon’s arms began to shake.

“Don’t kill him, Shannon.”

The Arab coughed beneath him.

Shannon breathed heavy, his lungs burned. His worlds were colliding. For a few moments no one moved.

He released his grip on Abdullah’s hair. He would follow this woman over a cliff if she suggested it.

You have to stop it, Shannon. Only you can stop it.

He snatched up Abdullah’s gun and scrambled to his feet. “Tanya! There’s a bomb!” He was frozen by this strange panic that swept through him. He felt oddly vacant.
Tanya, there’s a bomb?
What was he saying?

She looked at him dumbly. “It went off already—”

“No. Another bomb!”

Dear God, what had he done!

Abdullah struggled to his elbows, coughing again. The man should be dead already. But Shannon had changed somehow
.
The fog was gone and that realization was dizzying.

Abdullah stood and backed up slowly, staring. Then he turned and stumbled toward the skiff.

“Stop!” Shannon lifted the gun and fired it into the air. “The next one won’t miss.”

The Arab halted.

Shannon ran for him. He wasn’t sure how much time he had, but that no longer mattered. Either he would make it or he wouldn’t.

The Arab turned around and Shannon shoved the gun under his chin.

“Give me the transmitter!”

The Arab didn’t flinch. “It’s useless without the code, you fool. I don’t even know the code—”

“Give it to me!” Shannon screamed.

Abdullah dug in his pants pocket and pulled out the black transmitter. Shannon grabbed it and shoved the man away. He turned it on end, activated it with a familiar flip of the power switch, and stared at the number pad.

He lifted an unsteady hand, entered a five-digit code, pushed the green button on the left, and waited. In less than three seconds the red light on the top blipped once.

Transmission confirmed.

Tanya had come up and stood with her arms limp at her sides. The Arab stared at him white faced.

“Only Jamal—”

“I am Jamal.”

Abdullah’s face slowly went white. His lips suddenly twisted to a snarl and he launched himself with a scream. Shannon reacted without thinking. He stepped into the charge and brought his right palm across the man’s head. The impact dropped Abdullah like a sack of grain.

For a long moment Shannon just stood there, staring at the fallen terrorist.

“You are Jamal?” Tanya asked. “Who is
Jamal?”

The strength left Shannon’s legs. He backed away from them then, suddenly horrified. “Jamal,” he said.

She took a step toward him. “Yes, who is Jamal, Shannon?”

A desperate urge to run rushed through his head. His limbs began to shake.

“Shannon . . . Nothing Jamal has done will change my love for you.” She smiled.

It was too much. Shannon dropped his head and sobbed.

She came at him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay—”

“No!” He spun away.

“Please . . .”

Shannon turned back and flung both arms wide. “I am Jamal! Don’t you see? The bombs are mine!”

She blinked. Her face turned white.

He took a breath. “I made a vow, Tanya . . . Everyone who had a part in the killing of . . . our parents. The terrorists, the CIA.” He paused . . . it was sounding absurd.

She stared at him for a long second. “A nuclear bomb?”

He looked at her desperately. “Sula . . .” was his only explanation.

“He took you.”

Sorrow boiled over, and he turned from her, sobbing again. “Oh, God . . . Oh, God,” he prayed. He caught his breath. He sat hard to his seat and put his head between his knees.

Her hands were suddenly on his shoulders, and he wanted to pull away.

“Tell me what you did,” she said.

He closed his eyes.

“Tell me.”

How could he tell her?

He lifted his head and swallowed. He spoke, only half hearing himself. “I found out that the Brotherhood had sent Abdullah to South America for the purpose of building and smuggling a bomb into the United States. That’s why they established the drug routes. And the CIA helped them, without knowing about the bomb. They wanted Abdullah out of Colombia, so they suggested Venezuela. That’s why my parents were killed. Your parents.”

“And how did you become Jamal?”

“I decided the best way to destroy them was to take over their plan. Hijack it and use it to destroy the CIA. I persuaded the Brotherhood to let me coordinate parts of the plan. I took a good plan and made it better.”

“A bomb wouldn’t have killed just the CIA,” she said softly.

“I know. I don’t know. It didn’t matter.” He could hardly remember why he had done it now.

The Arab had stopped his groaning and lay still, perhaps unconscious. The jungle screamed about them, oblivious to all of this. They sat still for a while. She was stunned; he was numb.

“But it’s okay now,” Tanya said softly. “If you hadn’t become Jamal, the second bomb would have gone off.” She paused and her fingers began to work on his shoulders.

He turned to her.

“And if I hadn’t loved you,” she continued, “the bomb would have gone off. Father Petrus was right. If my parents hadn’t come to the jungle, or if we hadn’t fallen in love, or if Abdullah had chosen a different location, the bomb would have gone off. It was all God’s leading, his turning evil to good.”

Shannon understood what she was driving at, but the notion seemed impossible.

“If our parents hadn’t been killed?”

She nodded. “Yes, if our parents hadn’t been killed, the bomb would have gone off. They would have done it without you and today three million people would have died around Washington.”

Movement caught the corner of his eye, and he jerked his head.

Abdullah was halfway to them, face snarled and black, a bowie knife in his right hand. His scream began then, when he was only ten feet away.

Shannon rolled to his right, away from Tanya, palmed the pistol he’d taken from the man, and came up on one knee, gun leveled. Killing had been like breathing for the last eight years. He’d lived to kill as much as he’d lived to breathe. He’d hunted and he’d slaughtered and always he’d relished each death. Sula.

But now Sula had been overcome by love, and with Abdullah tearing at him like a rabid dog, pulling the trigger came hard. At the last moment, he inched the barrel down. The gun bucked in his hand.

Boom!

The slug took Abdullah in the hip.

The force of the impact spun him into the air and he landed with a thump to his back.

Shannon dropped the gun and slumped to his seat. He closed his eyes and moaned.
Father died for this? Mother died for this, so that I could become the one man who could stop the bomb?

He had fallen madly in love with a seventeen-year-old woman in the jungle for this?

Tanya’s arms slipped around his neck and her hot breath brushed his cheek. She was crying very softly.

“I love you, Shannon. And God loves you desperately.”

He draped his arms over her as she buried her face in his neck.

Then they were crying together, swept back to the pool, lost in each other’s embrace, lost in love reborn.

EPILOGUE

One Month Later

TANYA STOOD by the square oak table fidgeting nervously, watching the door through which she assumed they would bring Shannon. It was her first visit to the Canyon City Correctional Facility and she hoped it would be her last.

Helen eased herself into a chair with a sigh. “Not bad for a prison.”

Tanya shifted on her feet. Yes, but it was still a prison.

“Don’t worry, dear,” Helen said softly. “From what you’ve told me, Shannon will have no problem handling himself here. Besides, he’s practically a national hero. He stopped the bomb, for goodness’ sakes. He won’t be in here long.”

“He’s not who he used to be,” Tanya said. “I’m not sure what he can handle anymore.”

Tanya had remained by Shannon’s side during the indictment and the subsequent grand jury hearing. It was a strange case to be sure. The media had a field day with the CIA agent who was really Jamal, the terrorist, who was really a boy from the jungle who had watched his parents die at the hands of terrorists
and
the CIA. Would the real Shannon Richterson please stand up?

If you asked the man on the street, the real Shannon was the man who saved America from the most horrific terrorist plot ever to be conceived. Driven mad by his parents’ deaths, he had become complicit in the plot, true enough. But once he had come to his senses, he had also stopped that very plot. Without him, the plan would have been executed successfully. That’s what the man on the street would say. In fact, the whole county was saying it.

But technically, Shannon had assisted terrorists. All of those he himself had killed over the years, he’d killed in the service of the United States. But thirteen people had died on the
Lumber Lord
as a result of the nuclear detonation in which Shannon had participated. They were mostly a criminal lot themselves. But that did not excuse the man most Americans wanted to see set free.

An armed guard walked past the window across the room and Tanya’s heart leapt. The man who followed the guard was dressed in orange prison clothes like every other convict in the high-security building. But she hardly saw the bright color; she was looking at Shannon’s face. At his hair, at his jaw line— And then Shannon was out of sight again—for a moment. The door swung open and Shannon stepped through it. His green eyes lifted, focused on her, and held steady. He stopped just inside the door, which closed with a hush behind him.

Tanya’s heart thumped and for a moment they stared at each other. She wanted to rush up to him and throw her arms around him and smother him with kisses, but somehow the moment seemed too heavy for lighthearted kisses. This was Shannon, the man whom she had been led into the jungle to love. The man she had always loved. The man who was wrapped in muscle and hardened like steel and yet as gentle as a dove.

Her
Shannon.

A sheepish smile nudged his lips, and it occurred to Tanya that he was embarrassed.

“Hi, Shannon,” she said softly.

“Hi, Tanya.” He broke into a wide grin and walked toward them. Yes, the sight of her did that to him, didn’t it? It melted him.

She stepped out to meet him. Sorrow swelled through her chest and she knew she was going to cry. He took her into his arms and she buried her head into his shoulder and slipped her arms around his waist.

“It’s okay, Tanya. I’m okay.”

Tanya sniffed once and swallowed hard. “I miss you.”

They held each other and Tanya wanted to spend the whole hour just holding him. Behind them, Helen shifted in her chair. Shannon kissed Tanya’s hair and they sat across the table from each other.

“Well, young man, you look larger in person than on the tube,” Helen said. “And easily as handsome.”

Shannon blushed through a smile and glanced at Tanya.

“I’m sorry, I should have introduced you. This is Helen.”

Shannon looked at Tanya’s grandmother. “So you are Helen. I’ve heard a lot about you. All good, of course. It’s a pleasure meeting you.” He dipped his head.

“And you.” Helen grinned approvingly.

They exchanged some news and talked lightly about prison life. Tanya told Shannon about the latest positive spin on
Larry King Live
that was gathering steam. Shannon joked about the food and talked kindly about the guards. Within ten minutes they began to run out of small talk, and an awkward silence engulfed them.

Looking at the shy, gentle man across from her now, Tanya’s heart ached.

“You are still confused, Shannon,” Helen said.

“Grandmother,” Tanya objected, “I’m not sure this is the time.”

Shannon looked at Tanya and then lowered his eyes to the table.

“I can hardly remember who I was,” Shannon said. The room felt charged with electricity.
You don’t have to do this, Shannon
.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Actually I feel more lost than confused.” He looked up at Helen, who wore a faint smile. They seemed to look into each other’s souls.

“Then tell me what you remember,” Helen said.

Shannon hesitated and looked away.

“I remember what happened. It just seems like a whole different person did those things.” He paused. When he spoke, it was introspectively.

“When my parents were killed by the Brotherhood, something snapped. I went to the cave . . .”