James BeauSeigneur - In His Image James

When he opened his eyes again, he looked around at the empty room and realized that he had been dreaming. The morning sun shown in on his face through the cracks in the boarded-up window. Usually Decker dreamed of his family. When he awoke from those dreams he would close his eyes again to try to hold on for one more moment to the vestiges of the illusion. It was all he had. This dream, however, was just a curious distraction.

Decker flipped over onto his back. As he twisted his body and shifted his weight to sit up, the ropes that bound his hands and feet slipped off like oversized gloves and shoes.

He shook his head to reorient his thinking; was he still dreaming? He wasted no more time thinking about it, but quickly got to his feet. The door was unlocked, and he quietly cracked it open to look into the apartment. It looked just as it had in his dream. No one else was there. He crept toward the room which, in his dream, held his friend. Until this moment Decker had not known where Tom was, or even if he was still alive, but when he looked into the room, there was Tom.

Moments later Decker and Tom were walking down the hall and then down the same cluttered stairway. When they emerged from the building, Decker used his hand to shield his eyes in anticipation of the sunlight. None of this made any sense, but if he was dreaming this time he didn't want to wake up.

The two men moved from doorway to doorway, building to building, staying out of sight as much as possible. As they continued down the street they saw no one; it was like a ghost town. They decided to try to put as much distance between themselves and their captors as they could right away and then wait until nightfall to go on. All they knew to do was to move south toward Israel. They had no idea how far they were from the border, but with their eyes they silently pledged to each other to die rather than be recaptured. When they were a safe distance away, Decker related the strange dream of their rescue, though he did not tell Tom about Christopher's unusual origin. Later Decker regretted revealing the dream and made Tom promise not to repeat it to anyone.

For the next three nights Decker and Tom worked their way southward. As much as possible they stayed off the roads and away from any sign of population. On this night they had started early, about an hour before sundown. Decker could tell that their time was running out. Soon he and Tom would be too weak to travel. Their diet was limited to what they could catch, which meant mostly insects. On their first day they found a small wild dog which apparently had been killed by another animal, but reluctantly decided that it had been dead too long for them to eat. They regretted that decision now.

Just before dark Tom and Decker came to a well-traveled road. Waiting in a field of tall grass, they planned their crossing for after dark, hoping that traffic would be lighter and they could cross unseen.

As night fell, the traffic continued nearly unabated, though there were occasional gaps of several minutes between passing vehicles. Slowly, they approached the road, stopping short about fifty yards. The road was straight and flat and they could see several miles in each direction. A series of trucks passed, then there appeared to be a break. The nearest vehicles were coming from the east, about three miles off.

Decker and Tom moved quickly. As they reached the small rise on which the road was built, it seemed they would have no trouble getting across. Then, unexpectedly, halfway up the rise, Decker felt a tug at his leg. Looking down, he saw that he had caught his pant leg on some barbed wire fencing. He tried to pull free but the barbs dug into his leg and he fell, catching his other leg in the same tangled mass.

Tom had already stepped into the road when he heard Decker call out. He hurried back to help free him, but as the seconds passed they were forced to reassess the situation. The next group of vehicles was getting too close. Their only option seemed to be to lie as flat and still as they could and hope that the slight rise of the road would hide them from the direct beams of the passing vehicles.

Tom lay on his stomach next to Decker and held his breath. The vehicles inched closer, moving much slower than Decker had first thought. As the first truck passed, Tom moved suddenly. Before Decker could stop him, he was running into the road shouting and waving his arms. It's over, Decker thought.

The next truck stopped a few yards from Tom. From the back of the truck came men in uniforms, carrying rifles. They surrounded Tom, with their rifles pointing at him. Another group encircled Decker, who was still on the ground. Slowly Decker rolled to his back and looked up at the men. Each man wore a light blue helmet with an emblem of fig leaves surrounding a globe. The same emblem, which Tom had seen on the first truck, was emblazoned on the flags which flew from the antennas and was painted on the door of each of the vehicles. Decker recognized it. They were from UNIFIL, the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Lebanon.

That night Tom and Decker showered, were given clean clothes, and slept in real beds. Their stomachs could not handle much food, but before they fell asleep in the quarters of the U.N. compound, they each had two pieces of bread and a half cup of beef stew.

The next morning Tom and Decker were invited to share breakfast with the Swedish U.N. commander. "I read the report of the team that picked you up last night," the commander said as they walked across the compound to the mess hall. "That convoy you stopped had a very special guest on it. That's why the men responded as they did – they thought you might be Hizballah. That group of crazies would love to get their hands on somebody like Ambassador Hansen."

At breakfast Tom and Decker met the commander's special guest, the British Ambassador to the U.N., Jon Hansen. He was very interested in the story of their capture and escape, which they gladly told him, but neither mentioned the dream about Christopher. After breakfast they were taken to the compound's communications building. The U.N. post had one phone link to the United States via satellite, used primarily for contact with the U.N. headquarters in New York. Tom, who had no close family, insisted that Decker call first.

It was just after one o'clock in the morning in Washington when the phone rang. Decker listened as it rang two more times. Only partially roused from a deep sleep, Elizabeth Hawthorne picked up the phone. "Hello," she mumbled, her eyes still closed.

Decker listened to the sleepy, sweet sound of her voice. "Hello, honey. It's me," he said as tears began to roll down his cheeks.

Elizabeth quickly sat up in her bed. "Decker! Is that you?"

The love he heard in her voice brought new tears to his eyes and he could barely breathe as he answered, "Yes, it's me."

"Where are you?!" she asked anxiously. "Are you all right?"

"I'm in Lebanon at a United Nations post. Tom's with me. We're both okay. We escaped."

"Thank God!" she said. "Thank God!"

"They'll be taking us to Israel to a hospital for a check-up and observation. Can you come to Israel right away?"

"Yes! Of course!" she said as she wiped her own tears.

"How are Hope and Louisa?" he asked.

"They're fine, fine. They won't believe me when I tell them you called. They'll say that I was dreaming. I'm not dreaming, am I?"

"No," he answered, reassuringly, "You're not dreaming."

"Do you want to talk to them?" she asked. Her voice was excited and hurried. Her mind raced. She wanted to ask everything, say everything, do everything all at once.

"No, not right now. We're going to leave soon, so I can't stay on very long and Tom wants to call a cousin or uncle or something."

"How is Tom?" she asked, responding to the latest stimulus.