Riders of the Pale Horse

Davis Bunn T.

Description

"For more than one hundred years the West has failed to understand Islam" (U.S. State Department Official, 1992). This quote from the original edition of Riders of the Pale Horse introduces the story of two young Americans, a foreign-service officer and a mission volunteer who cross paths near the Afghanistan border on very different assignments and yet with a common goal: to stop nuclear materials from falling into terrorists' hands. High-stakes political and spiritual conflict keep readers on the edge of their seat in this suspenseful story from bestselling author T. Davis Bunn.

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2002
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781441270832
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

© 1994, 2002 by T. Davis Bunn
This edition is a revision of the 1994 edition of the book by the same title.
This story is entirely a creation of the author’s imagination. No parallel between any persons, living or dead, is intended.
Published by Bethany House Publishers 11400 Hampshire Avenue South Bloomington, Minnesota 55438 www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owners. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-7083-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Unless otherwise identified, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version ®. NIV ®. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.© Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. The “NIV” and “New International Version” trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society. www.zondervan.com
Cover design by Lookout Design Group, Inc.
If one allows the infidels to continue playing their role of corrupters on earth, their eventual moral punishment will be all the stronger. Thus, if we kill the infidels in order to put a stop to their activities, we have indeed done them a service.... To kill them is a surgical operation commanded by Allah the Creator.... Those who follow the rules of the Koran are aware that we have to apply the laws of retribution and that we have to kill.... War is a blessing for the world and for every nation. It is Allah himself who commands men to wage war and to kill. The Koran commands: “Wage war until all corruption and all disobedience are wiped out!”
Ayatolla Khomeni
What worries me is this: One would have thought that the rapidity with which the FBI cracked the World Trade Center bombing case would have sent a powerful message to terrorists that the United States is a tough place to operate in. Rather, it has done the opposite. The people arrested last week used it as an excuse to carry out an even more audacious terrorist campaign. They have gone from killing a handful of people at the World Trade Center to contemplating mass wanton murder, such as the destruction of two tunnels. One can only shudder to think what the next group is going to contemplate.
Interview with Bruce Hoffman Director of Strategy, Rand Institute International Herald Tribune June 28, 1993
We must reject democracy in favor of Islam, which is the unique political system worked out by the Almighty.... Our march has just begun and Islam will end up conquering Europe and America.... For Islam is the only salvation left for this world in despair.
Sheikh Saeed Sha’ban Leader of the Sunni majority in Tripoli, Lebanon
This book is dedicated to
Cyril Price
with heartfelt thanks for the wisdom and humor which helped me learn and survive in the Arab world.
And to his wife, Nancy,
for the splendid gatherings through which we keep these memories alive.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
M ATTHEW 5:9
Prologue
It was the quietest argument in the history of Russian nuclear science.
They were quarreling softly not for fear that people in the other labs might hear them. There was no chance of that. Despite the exterior walls being over two feet thick, the wind had such force that the entire central lab building rumbled like a huge bass drum. No, they were quiet because they did not want to wake their sleeping child. The wind did not bother her, for she was a true child of the Russian steppes. But she always cried when her parents argued. Their impending departure was hard enough without her wails.
They crouched behind the particle analyzer, which like most of the other lab machinery did not work. Their cramped alcove was carpeted with litter and dust. The cleaners had not ventured back there since the downfall of the Soviet Empire. Why should they, when their pay had slipped to twelve dollars a month and their families were slowly starving? At least the scientists were still fairly well fed.
“I am not leaving without you,” the woman quietly declared.
The scientist still wore his lab coat and cloth-soled shoes. His lank blond hair framed a face that looked perpetually hungry. Months of fear and worry had turned his cheeks cavernous and drawn his eyes back in their dark-ringed sockets. He hugged the sleeping child closer to his chest and softly replied, “If they find me, they shoot me. Is that what you want?”
“I want our daughter to have a father,” the woman replied, her voice a faint wail. “I want a future together with my husband.”
“This also do I want,” the scientist replied. “It is for this and only this that we risk all.”
“But together, Alexis,” she pleaded, the words so often spoken they had long since become a litany.
“We shall be together,” he replied, all force drained from his voice. He droned the words, his attention as much on the slumbering girl as on what he said. His daughter was three days from her fourth birthday and shared her mother’s dark coloring and almost Oriental features. Her blood carried the heritage of ten generations of Mongol raiders. “It is all planned,” Alexis told his wife. “You know this as well as I.”
“Yes? So you force us to travel four thousand kilometers alone, hoping against hope that you will send for us?”
Alexis searched his wife’s face. Despite the harsh demands of the past two years, her dark features still sparked with youth and passion and beauty. He eased his finger from the child’s clutches, reached over and stroked her cheek. “You have been my life’s only love, Alena.”
Angrily she shook her head, casting his hand away. “And down South? They do not shoot escaped scientists in the South?”
The lab’s outer door squeaked on rusting hinges, and they froze into terrified stillness. Footsteps scrunched across the grimy floor, and when the guard’s battered cap came into view they heaved vast sighs of relief. “You are ready?”
“We are.”
“Loading has commenced. I will come for you in five minutes. You must move swiftly.”
“Thank you, Ivan Ivanovichu. You are a good friend.”
“I am a man with four starving children, and for ten rubles more would flee with you.” He inspected them nervously, then withdrew, saying, “Be on guard. They are a strange lot, these gypsies of the road.”
When the door had creaked closed, Alena grasped his arm. “Answer me,” she hissed. “You will answer me or I will return to our quarters.”
“And do what?” he replied calmly. He could not return her anger. Not now. His entire world began and ended with these two precious ones. “Wait for our daughter to starve?”
“Things might improve.”
“We have been living on that myth for over two years now. It is time to face facts. The life here is meaningless. The situation here is beyond hopeless. To stay is to accept death.”
“Then come with us,” she pleaded, her fingers digging into the flesh of his arm. “Without you I am nothing, have nothing. I beg you, come!”
“What can I tell you that I have not already said?” He brushed a feather of dark hair from his daughter’s sleeping face and felt his heart squeezed by the impossible beauty of her. “To the south there is war. War upon war. There are no controls on the southern borders.”
“Then take us with you!”
“I cannot,” he replied softly, yet as unbending as the Siberian soil locked in winter. “I will not. It is too dangerous.”
“Too dangerous for us and not for you?”
“Too dangerous for you and our daughter. From Grozny I travel with Ilya and Yuri. This you know. The guides have instructed us to travel without our families. It is not a route for children. This you also know. Each additional person adds to the risk.” He looked up, willing her to see the love in his gaze. “I must go alone, Alena. For us.”
The door creaked open once more. The guard called quietly over the wind’s deep drone, “It is time.”
“We come,” Alexis called back.
“Tell me again,” she pleaded desperately, rising with him. “Let me know your hope since I have none of my own.”
“Tbilisi,” he repeated, the words a soothing chant. “We escape over the Caucasus into Georgia. From the capital Tbilisi we fly to Jordan. Amman, Aqaba, then a boat to Iraq. Then work and money, Alena. Enough money for a life. Enough money for hope.”
She searched his face with a feverish gaze, her defiance slipping away to the agony he knew it covered. A tear escaped from the side of her eye and trickled down the face he had come to know and love so well, so very well. She whispered shakily, “And us?”
“Graz,” he soothed, saying the word as he would an intimacy. “You travel to the detention camp in Austria. Processing takes six weeks. This is well known. By then I will send for you.” With both arms now supporting his daughter, he leaned forward and stroked Alena’s cheek with his own. He drank in the scent of her, willing himself to etch the memory deep. “Go. Await my word. I will contact you. I will.”
“Come now or they go without you,” hissed the guard.
“Take the satchels,” Alexis said, and slipped out from behind the machine, giving silent thanks that his daughter still slept. “We are ready.”
As with all personnel in these days of want and misery, the guard’s uniform was little more than rags. His cap was battered and sweat-stained, his coat lacked buttons, his trousers were so worn they had been washed of their color. His shoes flip-flapped as he walked out and scanned the corridor, then returned to wave them forward. “All clear.”
The three of them hustle