[Part Two here.]
For the fifth time in the last hour, his eyes strayed once again to the package. Thick brown paper wrapped around a hard object, it was roughly the size of a small cigar box. The stamps were from some Asian country, and the US Customs declaration said "Personal effects." There was no return address. It had come to the mother church across the border in El Paso, in care of his name.
He couldn't focus on the computer game on his laptop. It wasn't Juanita's purposeful movements in the kitchen distracting him, either. Nor could he blame it on the twin infant boys, for they were sleeping quietly after their lunch. He stretched his legs, rather stiff in the room which he purposely kept cool. Placing the computer in suspend mode, he closed the lid. Very deliberately he slid it back toward the wall on his very clean desk. With a will, he turned and looked at the package, reach over slowly, and pulled it toward himself.
He never got packages addressed to him individually, and got no mail at all delivered via the mother church. They had no record of him there, his name not written anywhere on a single scrap of paper. This was by his request. The package was obviously from Terrell, and he was pretty sure the customs declaration was absolutely truthful.
They had discussed the dilemma of a change in conscience. If either of them later regretted the whole thing, neither could talk about the other. Of course, they both knew that meant no one could discuss their mission unless the other was dead. Michael wondered if Terrell had carried the same seeds of doubt that haunted his own mind the past two years. Both were sure they had to do something, even if it meant getting caught. Even if getting caught meant one day turning themselves into the authorities. Yet both were sure none of that mattered, because they couldn't stop themselves, couldn't abandon the mission. That Michael had only a peripheral part in it didn't change his culpability. So sending the package to Michael at the church in El Paso was Terrell's permission for Michael to confess the whole thing. The package would surely alert them to look for Michael in Ciudad Juarez.
That was part of the reason for his delay in opening the package. He was a little surprised he hadn't heard anything by now. Might as well see what Terrell wanted him to have. Cutting the tape seal, he slowly unwrapped the brown paper. Inside was a wooden box, finely crafted with Native American carvings on the top face. It was a very tight fit, and only slowly the two halves separated. In the bottom half, a folded letter lay on top -- a single sheet.
"Typical," Michael thought to himself. Opening it, there were two sections, obviously typed at different times, on different typewriters. The paper was perfectly clean, and not the standard US letter sized. It was longer and narrower.
Michael
I didn't tell you about my heart condition. It was the result of some fever I got during a visit to the Middle East, and was why I didn't stay in the Marines longer. I was never able to get the evidence it was the result of some intentional bio-warfare agent, one of ours which got in the wrong hands.
. . .
It seems rather anti-climatic to end my life this way on board a cargo vessel. I'll be gone before we make the next port. Enjoy the exotic stamps. I was pretty sure I wouldn't even make the hike to port in Seattle, but felt fine. It was the combination of long dreary hours loading and unloading this scow for two years in tropical heat, and bad food, that seems to have finished me.
I'm glad for the quiet days, for once not looking over my shoulder, not having to think of every angle, every detail. He is faithful.
Terrell
Underneath was an old pocket Bible, well worn, tattered, and marked up by all manner of writing implements. A stack of large bills fell out from between the pages, scattered throughout the Bible. It was several thousand dollars. One of them had a small sticky note, and the words "mission support" scribbled on it. On one end of the box was a lump wrapped in athletic tape. Unraveling it, Micheal stared at what he felt sure were Terrell's original issued dog tags from Parris Island.
They had come back during Fall Break. That visit from the college students marked the end of Michael's second year with the mission. During that time, the church house had been finished, expanded, and several small homes now clustered around it like bodyguards. During the five days with two dozen young adults, they would pour a foundation already dug in preparation, raise a frame, finish the roof, set windows and doors, and start on the exterior siding of yet another house.
This time, Hermanito did all the hustling, and Michael translated and directed work from the ground. The volunteer driver for the student bus was an ancient retired preacher, and kept Michael company. It was altogether refreshing, for the man was surely one of the great unknown Bible scholars, spending his entire life serving in obscurity in small churches across the South. When he could no longer keep the pace of even those small churches, he retired to his home in West Texas, living in the shadow of the small Bible college where he had received his ministerial training. It was this college which sponsored these mission trips each fall to Ciudad Juarez.
The old preacher was called Bro. Lowe by everyone. This was his first mission trip, he explained. It was a way to stay busy after his wife died that past summer. Warm friends from the first minute, Michael had invited him to stay at his house. His spiritual hunger must have been painfully obvious, because Bro. Lowe kept their conversation mostly on biblical topics. The mission pastor hovered around, too. With his poor English, he didn't bother to ask many questions, but listened intently to whatever Michael and Bro. Lowe discussed.
The three were sitting in the shade of the church's east side porch, sipping iced lime tea. As usual this time of year in Juarez, it was still rather warm, and the building was a merciful block from the dry desert air blowing across the high ground there on the west side of town.
Bro. Lowe took a sip, then swallowed. Still holding the glass near his lips, with his eyes watching a floating lime seed, he asked, "I keep wondering how you pay your way out here, Michael." He looked up with a sly smile. "Is that a rude question?"
"Nah." Michael set his glass on the rickety cafe table in front of them, folded his hands and tilted his head back against the wall. "I brought a laptop with me and have been doing odd webmaster work now and then. There's a cantina near the bridge with clear line of sight to some commercial building on the US side. It puts out a strong wireless signal. I do most of the work here, then go down there to copy files and such."
"Could I ask about your customers?"
"I had some clients back California, who led me to some others, and of course there are odd jobs on the Web from time to time. Once in awhile I do some translation work, and I've had one ghost-writing assignment." Micheal picked up his glass, took a sip, then looked directly at the old preacher with a half-smile.
"The other thing puzzles me is how you keep the drug gangs from shooting this place up. With all the violence along the border, even out here there must be some trouble now and then."
Clasping his hands in his lap again, Michael looked down at them and was quiet for a moment. "One of my clients is connected to a drug gang," he said slowly, choosing his words carefully.
"Smart move," the old preacher said quietly.
They were silent for a few minutes. A dust devil spun out from between two of the little houses, then darted between two more.
As if lecturing to a class about something purely academic, the old preacher stared after the whirling dust and discussed for a moment about official governments, de facto governing entities, and finished with mentioning how the Gospel often required strange choices. Turning to Michael directly, "The greatest danger to the message of Christ is compromising, be it with shady characters or with government. No one but the Holy Spirit can tell you, but making too firm an agreement with either puts your message under their control."
"Paul was not above playing one government against another, primarily because he really knew God wanted him in Rome," Bro. Lowe went on. "He had already written to the Christians in Rome, and in the thirteenth chapter of that letter is something often taken completely out of context, then twisted further to make it seem believers are supposed to love their civil government."
"We've heard plenty of that preaching," snorted Michael.
"Yes, and it's all wrong. To submit in that context was general advice to avoid partisan resistance. Secular politics is none of the believer's concern. Getting involved is a waste of Kingdom resources, and cannot avoid compromising the message. Secular politics is completely ephemeral, a constant battle ground. Kingdom business is eternal."
Leaning forward, he continued. "Human government cannot do the work of the Kingdom. It's supposed to be in the business of forcing people to do things at the point of a sword. Paul made a sarcastic comment based on Nero's frequent claim he was the emperor 'in whose hands the sword was idle.' Because of the Covenant of Noah, human government is required, and it's power is centered on the authority from God to take human life. Individual acts of killing are usually wrong, but the overall mission of government is just that. True Christians can't govern worth a hoot, because they either won't play rough enough to keep sinners in check, or they foul their souls with excess bloodshed."
"So in John 8, Jesus didn't condemn the law, but the folks enforcing it," Michael offered.
"Exactly." Bro. Lowe leaned back again, drained his glass, and stood up. "Those folks were not believers, and had no understanding of God's love and mercy. Jesus left the legal system, and the condemnation for sin, in place but gave the woman a way out of the penalty. Did that for all of us, since we are all just as guilty of sin as she."
They began walking back to the work site. Michael turned his empty hands palm up, "Yet Jesus Himself claimed full authority over that law."
"Yep. He left the law around for sinners to keep other sinners in check. They are still under the Covenant of Noah, and you can expect disturbances in the natural weather pattern when they fail. Meanwhile, Paul made it clear you and I are not under that Law. We can't interfere in government, but we are under Grace. By obeying His teaching, we have fulfilled the purpose of all laws, as viewed by God. Christian living makes us lawful. If any government legislates against that life, that law is invalid in God's eyes. We may well still pay the civil penalty, but there is no sin in disobeying such a law."
"So engaging in active resistance against evil governments is wrong?"
It had been a strenuous day for the students, and they were all collapsed in their cots inside the mission, or soon would be. Those still awake showed their exhaustion with giddy laughter. As that noise was slowly exchanged for snores, the three men were sitting under the full moon on folding chairs behind Michael's old pickup. He kept it between two of the existing houses next to the new one as tool storage, locking the camper up at night with Hermanito inside. With the bus parked close on the open side, they sat in a rather private pocket against the wall of the mission building.
"If you feel led of God to give full allegiance to a rebel force, you have to do so with full acceptance of the penalty if you are captured. That's standard military morality, and I'm not one to criticize Christians serving honorably in the military," Bro. Lowe reasoned.
"And without an organized rebel force?" Micheal was pretty sure he already knew the answer.
"Passion or no, at some point you become in God's eyes nothing more than a criminal, a terrorist. A sudden act defending the helpless is usually not a problem, given the prophetic record. A pre-planned act of warfare, sabotage, booby-trapping -- I think you already know that's just murder and vandalism." The old preacher sighed, looking up at the bright moon.
He continued, "We should hardly be surprised when sinners do that to each other. One man's coward is another man's hero. In the logic of politics and resistance, who's to say at that level? Both sides are evil, and legitimacy will be declared by the winner. But for a believer to get involved, that's different. We don't operate at their level, and we have wholly different motives. We cannot call any government good. They can act tolerably at best, and all will become evil after awhile."
In his dreams that night, Michael stood in a shower that spewed sewage on him. The curtain became a solid wall, and he couldn't get out. The faucet knobs came off in his hands.
For most of the past two years, Burk kept his promise to stay with Mama at the little restaurant. One day she fell in the kitchen. Nothing to trip over, she just fell. One hip was broken, it appeared. When the ambulance arrived, she was barely conscious. They said something about a stroke, then took her away.
When Burk discovered no one would or could tell him what happened to her for the next week, he realized his home was gone. He had packed his stuff and was planning to slip out after closing time, locking everything behind him. The cooks had helped him keep the place going, but folks quit eating there so much. They stopped by only to ask for news about Mama. So he told the women he had no legal right to keep the place open, and they agreed there was nothing they could do.
That evening, some fellow dressed all too nicely came in the door. Burk instinctively stayed out of sight in the kitchen. The man showed the girls a piece of paper, saying something about a court order. They exchanged glances as he spoke to them a bit longer. He walked over to the cash register, opened it, and gave them each what was probably their last pay. After a bit of poking around under the counter, the man headed back into the kitchen. Burk's instincts had driven him further, out into the covered walkway out back. Through the cracked open door, he watched the man, surmising he was a lawyer.
The cooks asked the stranger one last question, and Burk listened closely. From the fragments of conversation, he made out this man was closing the place and locking it up. He heard the phrase "terminal care" and his heart fell. Without further ado, he fetched his bag and left, hiking out through the woods. A half-mile up the hill, there was a smokehouse he knew he could enter without arousing anyone's interest. It would do for the night.
Burk was a hobo once again.
Michael found out when a message on one of the activist bulletin boards caught his eye. He had been checking every few days just for that reason. They had traded a few brief greetings to each other there now and then. This time Burk said simply,
Mama gone. Hobo says "later".In due time, they had longer exchanges, though Burk had a slightly tougher time getting Net access at libraries. He was quite content to return to his previous existence. Further, he persisted in showing no remorse about the SWAT team. At the same time, he told Michael to find his own peace. By that, he meant it wouldn't matter if Michael told anyone, or turned himself in to the authorities. Burk was no worse off either way, as he saw it, since Michael didn't know where to find him. And Burk wasn't telling. Aside from comparing notes on the Shadow Government figures and the worsening oppression, they were just friends passing the time.
That's where things stood when the Fall Break rolled around and Michael met Bro. Lowe.
Christmas, then the New Year, and Michael was still waiting. He knew he could not rest until he at least explored turning himself in for the two attacks. Burk had released him from any obligation, but Terrell was still out in the Pacific somewhere, as far as Michael knew. The arrival of the package in early February was sad, but perfect timing. Michael had not been particularly tormented once he decided he had to come clean. It was just a matter of when.
As he held the two boys before bedtime that night, one on each knee, he wondered big a load they'd be in his lap the next time he saw them. That was assuming he was not executed, as so many captured resistors were these days. It also didn't take nearly as long as did once. It crossed his mind if he was quick enough to get inside the FBI office building, he wouldn't have to worry about a manufactured gun-fight cum execution, another popular means of handling resistance these days. Still, he had no way of knowing what to expect, and wanted to play it as safely as possible for his family.
He didn't want Juanita or the boys anywhere near the border when he went back. It was too late to prevent bereaving her yet again, at least in some sense. She could take it, he was sure, but that didn't prevent him becoming nervous wreck trying to tell her. Oddly, she was more worried about his emotional state than the content of the long story, the crimes to which he admitted. Noting he had repented, it was clear her faith was stronger than his, in that sense. Her deep eyes said more than words, telling of love, trust, and calm.
She must have a good grasp on what Job felt. She had been raised in Miguel Ahumada, a good ways south. She became a favorite of one of the school teachers. It was to this woman she turned when Juanita's parents divorced, her father left home, and mother sank into alcoholic despair. She was just 10 then, and the teacher was her lifeline, essentially raising her. No surprise, then, Juanita married the teacher's son, just a couple of years older. Upon promise of a job with Juanita's uncle in Juarez, they had moved north to the ratty huts clustered on the east slope of the ridge where the little mission church was being built.
Sure enough, there was work at a warehouse down near the river bank. It meant riding a bus, then walking a few blocks to the warehouse gate. Typically, he would arrive just before dawn, with his co-workers. He usually approached from the south side of the road, where trucks often lined up on the shoulder across from the gate.
That morning, a driver for the local drug cartel was out quite early. His SUV was one of the best kept of the fleet used for running drugs. It had rather wide tires suitable for the sandy soil, 4-wheel drive and a high suspension. From his last delivery payoff, the driver had taken the SUV to the shop for a special bumper, made to order. It had a sloped plate on the bottom, and a brush guard mounted at an angle on top. The idea was to allow him to push vegetation down quickly as he drove over it. He was on his way out west to test drive it in the desert.
Spying the trucks in perfect alignment across from the warehouse, the driver decided to challenge his skills by swerving close to the trucks at high speed. With is lights off, just inches from the trucks, there was no way Juanita's husband could have known. Apparently the bumper and brush guard were well designed, for they dropped the young man in mid-stride as he emerged from between two trucks. One second he was stepping out through the gap, the next he was flat on the pavement, already dead. The driver of the SUV never noticed, apparently.
Juanita turned again to her mother-in-law, the woman who practically raised her. They remained close some five years after they were both bereaved. It was Juanita's custom to travel for a visit in mid-February every year. Marrying Michael didn't change this, except now she stood to face being widowed yet again, in effect if not in fact. To play it safe, he told her to hold onto the money from Terrell's package. If he didn't come back, she'd need it.
After seeing off his wife and sons, Michael steeled himself. The worst part was the complete lack of information on his case. That is, news reports were naturally bogus. After the first couple of weeks in Juarez, he had pretty much quit checking mainstream and underground news sites for updates. The original story was about terrorism, and the professor was listed as an accidental death. The destruction of the listening site was covered by the Green forums, but only what one might observe physically from afar. The bomb scare in Vegas was quickly hushed.
He had already decided the best, most direct path, was through the FBI office in El Paso. Leaving his truck at the mission, he rode the bus downtown, then decided a hike in the cool mid-morning air would help him clarify his thoughts. He had only his passport and old driver's license, plus a few pages of notes with the basic facts and dates. Most of it did not appear anywhere in the news reports, as far as he knew. Crossing the bridge was routine, and he caught a bus to within a block of the FBI office. The place was bustling.
Once inside, he announced at the front desk he was turning himself in, but the man seemed unimpressed. "What for?"
"I suppose the charges would be terrorism, vandalism, and several murders," Michael said with a straight face.
"We've got drug gangs doing that every day. Have a seat over there, and I'll see if we have an agent available." Just like that. No handcuffs, no whisking away to interrogation, nothing. Just wait your turn.
After quite some time, the man at the desk managed to waylay a passing agent, identified by the badge hooked to his belt. Walking over to Michael, he asked again why Michael was turning himself in, and seemed, if anything, less interested than the first man. Producing the pages of notes, Michael watched the agent flip through the them. He told Michael to wait there, then walked away and disappeared around a corner.
Michael realized he was hungry, then decided it was part of the suffering he deserved for his crimes. He watched the constant passing of people, then yawned. Slumping down into the hard chair, he was surprised when, what seemed just moments later, the agent was handing the sheets back to him. Michael realized he had dozed off.
"Thanks for your time sir, but we happen to have solved all those right after they happened. The SWAT team suffered some casualties taking down an Islamic terror cell, but most of them survived. We have no record of any professor killed or even injured at that college a year either direction. There is no record of a bomb scare in Las Vegas hotels during that year. As for the NSA station, we understand there was some sort of equipment malfunction, but they don't release much information even to us. Those cases are closed, and we aren't amused by your fictional version. Now, if you don't mind, I have some real work to do."
Michael rose in a daze, then stood slack-jawed as the agent hurried away down yet another hallway. He was still there in that pose a few minutes later when someone behind said loudly, "Excuse me, sir!"
Turning suddenly to see a cart loaded with boxes, Micheal sputtered an apology as he stumbled back against the wall. After watching the cart pass, he stood a few seconds longer, then practically ran out the front door.
Back on the busy street, he stood at the corner for a few minutes, wondering if he was dreaming, that his body was still asleep in the waiting area, about to be arrested. Managing to find a cafe, he wandered in and sat down. Ordering absently, he stared into space awhile, then looked around again, still confused. He eventually ate mechanically, then came to himself when his eyes lighted on a row of public computer terminals.
Logging onto the activist bulletin board, he was about to post a query, when he saw a message from Burk. It said,
Back yet?Michael sat for a long moment, then typed a response:
What do you know that I don't?Checking a couple other sites, he came back to the first just in case. Burk must have been at a library somewhere that very moment.
Nothing. You've forgotten the principles of
propaganda. A timely and useful lie is far more important than solving
a crime.Then he remembered that one conversation about propaganda. Not the words, but he recalled the content and it's impact on him. Cynical as any reporter should be, Michael was unprepared to hear that al-Qaeda was fake. When Burk showed him the evidence, carefully concealed in plain sight, he was stunned. From there, Burk worked through an explanation of the Neo-cons, and the vision of Leo Strauss. Strauss cynically taught it was vitally important to build a mythical American civil religion, so the masses would really believe the US had some divine destiny. Even when a side-by-side comparison of facts indicated we had done more harm than some of our "enemies," we were still somehow better than them, and they hated us unjustly.
It took some time, but the Neo-cons had convinced Conservative Evangelical preachers to damn communism, and when the Soviet Union fell apart, to damn Islam. It was the very same radical Islam the CIA had created by torturing a few conservative Muslim philosophers in countries where there was some resistance to our Westernizing cultural evangelism. When some of the radicals proved unable to do much damage, it became necessary for CIA field agents to create the likes of al-Qaeda. America needed a big bogey to keep her focused, and her leaders funded all the terror attacks necessary to create the climate of fear.
Thus, the SWAT raid was more useful for anti-Muslim propaganda than as a criminal case to catch a couple of guys who could never pull it off again in a million years. And if they could drive Michael insane in the process, so much the better. Covering up the damage to the NSA station was more about testing infiltration of the radical Greens. He still wasn't sure about the professor and the effect of their pointed warning against overuse of SWAT teams. He asked Burk,
Why coverup the professor?A few minutes later, the response came:
Dunno. Maybe too busy with the Amero and
NAU.Okay, that's plausible. They've been too tied up getting the North American Union going and crashing the dollar to force everyone over the Amero, a new currency like the Euro. There really was an awful lot of activity in those areas lately.
Just to settle some nagging doubts this was really Burk, he asked a question about Burk's favorite drink:
What do you pay for a beer these
days?Burk never drank beer, or course. The response came back,
Wine coolers are twice what they were two years
ago.Burk liked wine coolers, and understood the question. That was about all he could do to make sure it was Burk. Not that it really mattered. Michael had come to a new resolve:
Time for hobo hiding. God bless, and see you in
Heaven.He didn't wait for a response. Moving over to the pay phones, he dialed the Baptist church. When the secretary picked up the phone, he asked for the Men's Minister, who had been the ramrod on most of the building at the mission in Juarez.
"Bro. Tom, this is Michael. Yeah, I'm on this side today. You seem to know an awful lot about mission building projects. Seems to me the Juarez hill mission is about to become self-sustaining. I was wondering if you knew anything about similar projects farther south... How far? How about South America? Yeah, I know, but I have a recent donation that should cover start up costs. Where? Paraguy..."
By Ed Hurst
02 January 2007
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: People of honor need no copyright laws; they are only too happy to give credit where credit is due. Others will ignore copyright laws whenever they please. If you are of the latter, please note what Moses said about dishonorable behavior -- "be sure your sin will find you out" (Numbers 32:23)