Insurrection. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ once been a chapel.

      Only one wall still stood, and the bishop did his best to focus his fuzzy eyes on a stained-glass window that had miraculously been spared. Spared from what? he wondered for a moment. Then he recalled a loud noise. As his vision began to clear, he continued to look at the stained glass. It featured Jesus Christ on the cross, his forehead bleeding from the crown of thorns that had been placed on his brow. The sight brought back another piece of Adewale’s past, and he remembered that he was a priest—no, a bishop.

      He turned away from the ruins and saw the men on both sides of him. One swung his machete at Adewale’s neck. Miraculously, the assault fell short, but the ugly black steel came close enough that he felt the air move against his throat.

      The compulsion to walk came over him again, and he moved on, passing between the two attackers and wondering why he had no desire to run. But the same remoteness, a feeling that even though he was in the presence of evil, he was invulnerable to the blades, continued to coax him on.

      Still wondering why he felt no fear, the bishop left the screams and cries behind him and walked on. He did his best to take stock of the situation, focusing his brain on what he could remember as he continued to walk down an asphalt street.

      He was a bishop; he remembered that now. A bishop in New York City. But he was not in New York at the moment. Was he back in his home country of Nigeria? He thought so.

      Adewale pushed himself on, one wobbling step after another. Something had happened in the chapel, where he’d been speaking to a group of fellow bishops. A bomb? Yes. A bomb set by terrorists. Thugs who were now chopping the survivors to pieces with their machetes. He had been spared. Why, he didn’t know, but he knew that they might still find him and kill him.

      The bishop realized he had entered a low-income housing area. Every block he passed exhibited a little more poverty than the last. Soon the rough asphalt ran out and was replaced with dirt streets.

      Finally, the bishop came to a corner and halted abruptly. Why he’d stopped was as big a mystery as why he’d felt compelled to walk. He found himself next to a wood-frame house, and his eyes were drawn to the backyard, where a clothesline had been stretched from the building to a rough wooden pole in the ground. Most of the clothes hanging on the line looked like women’s, but right in the center, waving gently in the breeze, were a pair of khaki pants and a matching work shirt.

      The bishop glanced down at his cassock. It had been black, but was now covered in so much dust it was gray. It would still identify him as a Christian bishop if the terrorists who had bombed the chapel came looking for him.

      Adewale knew he needed to change clothes. He would take the pants and a shirt from the line. He started that way, then halted again.

      Thou shalt not steal ran through the bishop’s mind. Taking these pants and the shirt would be wrong. He didn’t want to steal. He particularly didn’t want to steal from anyone so poor they had to live in this crumbling shack.

      But what if he took the pants and shirt and left the cassock? That would be a trade rather than a theft. Wouldn’t that be all right with God?

      The bishop’s mind was finally losing the fuzziness he’d been experiencing since the explosion. He looked back at the line, then reached into a pocket of his cassock and felt his money clip. Then he looked at the house, and now that the haze that had hampered his thinking was gone, he realized that the people who lived here would probably be eager to sell him the shirt and pants. Particularly since he would pay them far more than the clothes were worth.

      That was the answer, the bishop thought. He would buy the clothes from them.

      Bishop Joshua Adewale’s legs still felt a little unsteady as he left the road and walked across the ragged grass toward the front door. The three steps leading up to the porch were made of wood that had rotted long ago. As he mounted the second one, he heard a loud crack, and his left foot broke through the plank to the ground.

      That confused him again, and for several seconds he simply stood where he was and looked down at his trapped leg. Finally, he reached down with both hands and, pulling with all his strength, managed to get his foot free of the shattered stair.

      The effort left him exhausted.

      The bishop realized that while some of his thinking had returned to normal, other aspects of his mind were still numb with shock. Such as the leg he had just skinned. He knew there was pain along his shin, but it was almost as if someone else was hurting.

      He moved onto the porch without further incident and stopped in front of the door. The wood in the lower half was as rotten as the steps. The top half featured a large cracked pane of glass, behind which hung a blanket.

      As he had done when he’d broken through the step, Adewale stood still, just staring for a moment, wondering what to do next.

      Knock. It was almost as if he heard an actual voice in his head, and he realized he was not entirely over the shock he had experienced. His rational brain faded in, then out, then in again and...

      The man in the dust-covered cassock slapped himself across the face. Suddenly, the world came back into focus. At least for the moment. He reached out and rapped three times on the flimsy wooden door. He waited, frowning, again trying to remember why he was here.

      To change clothes, said the voice in his head. He could hear it more clearly now. You are going to offer to buy clothes from these poor people, and you are going to pay them much more than the clothing is worth because they need it.

      But why did he need different clothes? Oh yes. The terrorists. Boko Haram.

      Finally, the blanket behind the glass moved slightly at the lower left-hand corner.

      Through the tiny opening, Adewale saw a dark brown eye.

      Then the door opened slightly and he looked down to see a little girl holding the doorknob. She stared out through the crack, gazing up into the bishop’s face. She wore a tiny red T-shirt and blue shorts that looked as if they had originated in America or Europe. Her hair was a mass of braided pigtails that shot out from her head and had rags securing them at the ends.

      “Who is it?” called a voice from somewhere behind the child.

      The tiny brown figure on the other side of the door didn’t speak. She just kept staring up at Adewale.

      Footsteps tapped on the wood floor. A moment later, a woman with caramel-colored skin opened the door wider and looked out at him. Her brown eyes opened wide and her mouth opened in a silent “Oh.”

      The bishop and woman looked at each other for a good ten seconds before she finally found her voice. “We heard an explosion,” she said in a half whisper, as if she was afraid the neighbors might hear her. “We did not know where it came from. Was it the Boko Haram monsters?”

      Adewale shrugged. “That would be my guess,” he said. “But I do not know for sure.”

      “It was Boko Haram,” she stated, nodding vigorously. “They started out in the north, but now they have come south. And no one will ever be safe again.”

      “May I come in?” the bishop asked. A low buzzing sound had been in his ears ever since he’d awakened after the explosion, while the pain throughout his body had been so severe that he had barely acknowledged it. Now, as he continued to regain his senses, the sound seemed to grow louder.

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