"You don"t say."
"Say!" Kenny said.
"I do say," Leah said. "Can you guess?"
"I don"t know," Buck said. "Thousands, I suppose."
"Can I guess?" Zeke said.
"Z! " Kenny shouted.
"I"m guessin" more"n thirty thousand."
"Ships that big?" Buck said. "Sounds high."
"He"s right on the money," Leah said. "What, did Chloe tell you or something? How"d you know that?" Z couldn"t hide a grin. "Yeah, she told me. But that"s a pretty good memory, right?"
Buck turned it over in his mind. "What happens to all those ships?" he said.
"Ruined," Leah said. "Dead in the water. Well, dead in the blood anyway."
"And if G.o.d lifts the judgment? The blood turns back to salt water, then what?"
She shook her head. "No idea. I can"t imagine what it would take to clean a ship of blood throughout its works."
"And the dead fish," Z said.
"Fish! "
"Who could stand the smell? You don"t see it on the news, but people who live on the coasts are trying to move. If nothing changes, the smell will only get worse, and the disease and all that. Ugh!"
"Ug
Buck let Kenny run off. "I can"t imagine how Carpathia deals with this. You can"t spin it, can"t gloss over it. Thousands are dying every day, and think of the crews marooned. They"ll eventually all die. Hey, Leah, I did a piece a few years back on the surprising dependence Panama had on its shipping industry. What does this do to a country like that?"
She flipped through some sheets. "They"re the only country with more ships than Greece," she said. "It"s got to bankrupt them."
The mention of Greece made Buck check his watch. "Late afternoon there," he said. "If the plan is working, they ought to be ready to move in when it gets dark." "Why are they waiting? "
Buck shrugged. "Mac thinks it gives them an advantage. He doesn"t know what"s going to unfold, but if they have to shoot their way out or try to escape somehow, he figures they"re a leg up in the darkness."
Leah sat staring, as if she wasn"t listening.
"Something on your mind?" Buck said.
"I was expecting a call or an e mail by now. Chloe told me a businessman had something he wanted to ship to Petra. Cheap housing modules of some kind."
"Yeah?"
"Wealthy guy, made a killing in low cost housing, then became a believer. He"s really into the timing. Totally buys into Tsion"s charts and graphs, figures the Glorious Appearing exactly seven years from the original agreement between Carpathia and Israel."
"Don"t you?"
"Sure. If Tsion told me today was yesterday, I"d believe it." It was clear she had lost her train of thought. "I miss him, Buck. I pray for him constantly."
"We all do."
"Not like I do."
"Yeah, I know."
"What? "
"I know.
"You do?"
""Course," Buck said. "Just thinking about him makes you forget what you were talking about."
She looked embarra.s.sed. "That"s not true!"
"Prove it.
"We were, uh, talking about ships. Panama and Greece. "
"We were onto modular housing, Leah."
"We were, weren"t we?"
"We were. Now who is this guy and what do we need to hear from him?"
Leah stood and looked out a pinhole in the black paint that covered the windows. "Not sure," she said. "He"s from right here in Illinois. Something Grove. Says we"ve got less than three and a half years left, and he"d like us to help him figure a way to get his inventory to Petra. Says they could build the houses themselves in no time. You think he survived, don"t you, Buck?"
"Survived what?"
"The bombing."
"This guy was in Petra?"
"Tsion! "
"Oh, pardon me. We"re back to him. Well, I"m just as concerned about my father in law, and Chaim, and Abdullah, but yes, I do."
"Do what?"
"Think they survived."
"We won"t be able to tell from the news, will we?"
"No. But Chang should know. He knows all."