With a sudden roar the gunship spun overhead, climbed sharply, and kicked its tail around. It was lining up for a second pass.

Shannon leapt to the bridge. He grabbed the rope and scrambled down the sagging span, but the sudden movement caused the bridge to lurch wildly under his feet. In a moment of panic he almost missed the rope entirely and then found it quickly. To his right the attacking craft lined up on the bridge for another pass.

Crossing had been the wrong choice—he knew it then, when the first bullets took a chunk from the board at his feet. He should have run back to the forest. Now he stood in the open, helpless, with a cannon playing the planks like invisible fingers on a keyboard.

He was going to die!

The thought immobilized him.

THE PILOT watched the boards disintegrate before the boy and he eased the stream of lead to the right, knowing now that he could hardly miss.

“Finish him!” Abdullah said beside him.

The pilot quickly refocused his fire. The young man suddenly jerked back as if a huge hand had slammed into his chest. A spray of red blood glistened through sunlight. They had him!

He flipped backward over the rope that supported the bridge and tumbled lazily through the air, his hands limp like a puppet’s. The fall alone would have been enough to kill a man, but neither of them could miss the gaping, bloody hole in the boy’s side.

Abdullah groaned and the pilot blinked at the sound.

And then, far below, the body splashed into the current and disappeared.

“Around,” Abdullah ordered. Sweat poured from his face. His black hair with its distinctive white wedge lay plastered against his skull. “Around. We have to be certain.”

The pilot guided the helicopter around to look for the boy. But the pilot knew he was wasting his time.

The boy was dead.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Eight Years Later
Monday

“GOOD MORNING, BILL.”

“Good morning, Helen. You sound good.”

“I have news.”

That made the pastor pause. “What kind of news?”

“It’s starting,” Helen said. She paused. “Evil is thick in the air and it’s about to take this country by storm.”

“I’m pretty sure those were your exact words eight years ago.”

“I told you then and I’ve told you a hundred times since that the death of Tanya’s parents was only the beginning.”

“Yes, Helen, you did tell me. And I’ve prayed with you. For eight years. That’s a long time.”

“Eight years is nothing. God’s playing his pieces in this chess match and really I think it began fifty years ago. They’ve been moving and countermoving for decades up there on this one.”

“A chess match? I hardly think we’re pawns in some game.”

“Not a game, Bill. A match. The same match cast over each of our hearts. And you’re right—we’re not simply pawns. We have a mind of our own, but that doesn’t mean God isn’t telling us to move two spaces to the right or one space forward. Actually, it’s more like a whisper to our hearts, but it’s the thunder of heaven. It’s up to us whether we will listen to that thunder, but make no mistake, he moves the match. In this case, the match started way back. And one of the moves was for Tanya’s parents to go as missionaries to Venezuela. To bring truth to the Indians, yes, but perhaps even more, to bring Tanya there, so that she could become who she is.”