Out of the Blue

Chapter 1

The wind at Taipei International Airport ruffled the hair and loose clothing of passengers moving in and out of the large terminal packed with people. Two of the passengers, both men, had stopped near the entrance to the China Air check-in gate and were talking as other passengers rushed by. One of the men, Rusta Akbubi, was handing an envelope to the other, a native of Taiwan named Charles Shendu, who referred to himself as Slants.

Here are the tickets to America, said Mr. Akbubi, and also in this envelope are the funds to support you until your next contact with one of the team. As you know, we do not know when that will be—only that much of that decision will depend on you.

Slants nodded his head, indicating that he understood. He had met Mr. Akbubi six months earlier and served as his guide through mountainous territory as he and fellow travelers hunted some rare animals. He was a representative of a politically militant group in Syria known as the Wahabi. The Wahabi sought to become known as a militant group with the goal of bringing turmoil to those who did not fully believe in or accept sharia law, like many who lived in the United States. They were secretly funded, in part, by the terrorist faction of the Saudis, who with other violent activists had invested heavily in divisive tactics designed to unsettle civil and governmental structures in several targeted areas of the globe.

What brought them to Taipei was an effort to recruit skilled individuals who would align with their cause. These individuals would be paid to undertake a variety of high-risk roles and blend with other advocates in individual or small group missions. Those designated as resource specialists also looked for opportunities to acquire materials and equipment, both legally and illegally, to develop and construct weapons that would support extremist efforts.

Slants was an example of the highly skilled risk taker they sought, and they were willing to pay him well for his services. His abilities as a snake fighter, a form of gambling in Taiwan, so attracted recruiters that he was ranked as one of the top candidates to fill a position as part of their plan to disrupt life throughout the world.

When given the envelope containing money, pictures, maps, detailed travel plans, and other information related to his duties, Slants simply said thanks to Mr. Akbubi. He was given a period of several weeks to travel and become familiar with American life. The month was April. He was to be in North Carolina in June, where his activities were to begin.

Before leaving him, Mr. Akbubi asked Slants if he was nervous.

A leetle, was the reply, but I always, you say, nervous before beeg change. Theese ees new venture. I look very forward to new life.

He was equipped with a green card, a passport, an international driver’s license, credit cards, and a cell phone, which he was to use to check in from time to time with his associates, and they with him.

Well, good-bye, said Mr. Akbubi, and good luck. He waved to Slants as he entered the China Air area to await processing as a passenger.

While Slants had experienced a thorough training of US customs and habits and had been taught to drive several vehicles, he had never been to America. His thoughts constantly cycled and recycled over what Mr. Akbubi had taught him.

Listen to what others say. You can learn from them and become a better speaker of English by taking notes and pronouncing new words when you are alone. You can always ask questions about anything, and practice, practice, practice.

Slants prided himself on his patience and his willingness to learn. He was, however, more than a little afraid of the unknown. Next stop: the United States of America and the famous city of New York, unknown but for what he had read and seen videos about. Can there really be that many cars in one place? he asked himself.

Chapter 2

While he had prepared to leave Pitt County and travel to Charlotte to his parents’ home before, Jacob was concerned about how long it might take him this time to reach the city. Although he had arranged with a student at East Carolina U to catch a ride for the first leg of the trip, the second portion of his journey had not been set. His initial ride would take him as far as Raleigh. From there, he thought he should have no trouble finding someone at a truck stop to complete his trek to familiar territory.

Although his dad had offered to provide his way, his youthful independence still intervened, especially since this year he was traveling just before his mother’s birthday. To him it would seem awkward for her to travel to pick him up, perhaps even childish on his part to ask. He knew that his mother always traveled with his father on a trip that involved family. Jacob gave thought to the notion of having his own car but dismissed it with an old-fashioned stubbornness of which his family had been accused deep into the generations. He considered it an unwise use of funds that likely would be needed more in the future.

Jacob placed his light, white sweater into the metal box with handles he called a trunk and snapped the lid shut. He then propelled it across the floor with his size-twelve feet, opened the closet door, and maneuvered the old-looking rectangle securely into the corner of his small storage depository. The metal box had been given to him by his grandmother, who had urged him to keep it in a safe place. Obediently, he moved it with him to the rooming house where he currently lived in Greenville, North Carolina.

She had told him, It is meant to bring you good luck, and I want you to have good luck. Good luck is necessary for safe travel, and as you pursue teaching as a career, you will travel to many places.

Jacob Grafton was one of eight grandchildren of Granny Lou (Louise) and Jamison Grafton. Granny Lou had actually been widowed once by the death of Preston Grafton preceding the marriage to her current husband. Both husbands had the same last name, though they were not related, and both had chosen to be physicians. When the families of Granny Lou’s children came together for special occasions, the younger children always spent time among themselves trying to figure out where in the pecking order they were to sit for a meal. Jacob usually wound up at the card table in a side room, where he and his tablemates were truly out of sight, if not out of mind.

As the years went by, Jacob realized that he was Granny Lou’s favorite. Of course, he had a huge advantage because he lived next door to her and could see her often. Jacob was a strong, good-looking boy like all of Granny Lou’s sons, his uncles, whom he admired. He was almost six feet tall, sandy-haired, and his eyes were so blue that his cousin Holly had once proclaimed that she felt as if she were looking into the sky on a cloudless day when talking to him face-to-face. Jacob always tried to remain in good physical shape. His grandmother depended on him for physical chores because of his long arms and powerfully built legs, which allowed him to accomplish difficult tasks without trouble. He was, for example, the only person she allowed to search for and cut down a Christmas tree for her. He located these trees in an adjoining pasture, which was populated liberally with cows, mules, and a few goats. The tree he proudly brought to her was always perfect, as perfect as a cedar could be. It was always welcomed by Granny Lou because Jacob had cut it down, squared the bottom, made a holder for it, and placed it in the exact spot chosen for it to reign in her house over the holidays.

While Granny Lou was a small woman, she was steely in her determination to do everything the right way for the benefit of her family and friends. As the daughter of a Methodist minister, she wanted to carry forth the traditions of truth, honesty, worship of the Lord, family loyalty, and caring for one another.

After school, Jacob would always wander into her kitchen, curious to see what he smelled. He spent many an afternoon by her side as she mixed flour, nuts, and candied fruit, or dished mincemeat into a pie plate. Put a little milk with a fresh oatmeal cookie, and all was right with the world for him. He might even help her put together another batch of cookie dough, grind some ham for ham salad, or learn how to mix the ingredients for a pound cake.

While they were, of course, relatives, extremely important for him was that they were friends, and he felt that he could talk with her about anything and not worry that it would be divulged to others. Jacob remembered the day that he told her that he was worried that he might not get any taller and that he had been hanging on a bar in the barn outback of her house to stretch his spine. He wished to become taller. He had always thought of himself as being tall, but as he grew he was seeing other boys who were, in his mind, beating him in the height department. In what was as painful a statement as he had hoped not to hear but as truthful as he was likely to get, his granny told him that he was not going to get any taller and that he could stop hanging from the bar.

He had, she said, surpassed the height of most of his uncles, except Nickolas, who was six foot four. His future growth was going to be muscular in nature rather than added height.

Jacob was shocked and felt a punch to his stomach. He discovered that in spite of information he had seen in some magazine ads, no amount of spine stretching was going to increase his height. He knew that Granny Lou shot straight, and her information was usually true. It was, however, at times unwanted and unwelcome.

Granddad Grafton would tell him anything he wanted to hear, especially when engaged in a game of Chinese checkers. Granddaddy James, as he was known by the children, spent long hours in a chair listening to tapes of old radio shows that were no longer on the air. He reveled in One Man’s Family, Poppa Young’s Family, The Little Brown Church in the Wildwoods, and The Shadow, to name a few.

Granddaddy James played any game with ferocity and rarely lost. It was the extent of his athletic endeavors except for the physical activity of cleaning up for meals. Jacob was amazed at how easily his grandpa won and asked him several times to teach him his tricks. His reply was always, Just watch me; observe and learn.

Jacob watched, and he observed, but he never learned whatever it was the older Grafton did to so easily defeat him, and he often left feeling like an idiot. Many times, he was ready to throw in the marbles used by players to advance their positions and never play again. He always returned, however, although the losing record he had amassed remained intact.

Granny Lou was a master seamstress and worked wonders with material, thread, and yarn. Often she would work her magic for Jacob, the result of which was a new sweater or shirt that he wore with pride as the occasion arose. Because Jacob was so appreciative, she loved to make him anything from good food to knickknacks. Many times Jacob heard her say, People will help you if you truly appreciate their efforts. One simple rule for exhibiting appreciation is to help another person or persons when they need or want your assistance, or even when it just seems the right thing to do.

As the years passed and Jacob continued his education to become a teacher, the time spent with his grandmother diminished in quantity and quality. It always seemed, however, that just a few minutes would catch them up quickly. From time to time, Granny Lou would give her grandson something else to add to the box, such as a small knife, a can opener, or a small hammer. He would dutifully place it inside with the other items designated for possible use in his future life.

One item he particularly cherished was a garment she had worked on for a year or two. On Christmas after his graduation from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, she surprised him with a multipocketed shirt that had a cell phone sewn in the shirttail. She told him that someday he would need this article of clothing, so he should put it where it could be easily reached. And so he did, arranging it neatly and compactly in the travel box. What he did not know was that she had researched power supplies for the particular cell phone she had inserted. With the help of a friend of hers whose husband was a military communications specialist, she was able to procure a battery that lasted two years, and she confidently put it into the phone.

Within three weeks of Christmas Day, Jacob’s Grandfather Grafton died of heart trouble. His grandmother slipped into depression in stages, it seemed, and never really recovered. Within five months, she too passed away of some mystery illness the doctors could not seem to identify. Jacob was told by his parents that caring for Grandpa James had been such an important part of her life that she gave in to death rather than feel as if she were no longer needed. Jacob saw this as a long way of explaining what to him was a broken heart.

In the days following her death, Jacob thought often of how his grandmother had dedicated her life to others. She found a way to help struggling young students house themselves. Before he retired, Jacob’s grandpa and Granny Lou remodeled rooms in their house so that three small apartments emerged. Their intentions were to rent them to married students who were studying medicine as interns in local hospitals and who needed an inexpensive place for their families to stay. There, they could receive support from their landlord and from each other. Both of Granny Lou’s husbands had told her that it helped while in schools to be around others who were working in the same courses so that notes could be compared and help requested from whoever understood the subject matter being mastered at the time.

Jacob always felt like the apartments were another way for Granny Lou to expand her family. She was well-known among the medical community and was frequently visited by alums of the apartments once they became practicing physicians. She was especially close to the wives of the inmates, whom she referred to as DTBs (Doctors to Be).

In Greenville, the place he found for the box his grandmother had given him was tucked neatly beside the desk on which he wrote his lesson plans. When it caught his eye, he could remember the times he would revere as some of the best a young man could have. Those times with his grandmother were important for Jacob’s character development and the emotional growth he would need to become the man he wanted to be.

Chapter 3

Jacob spent all of his youth in Charlotte and was the only son of Dr. Jack and Elizabeth Grafton. Both of his parents were educated, having attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Wake Forest University, respectively. They met while his father was attending medical school at Bowman Grey School of Medicine (Wake Forest), where Elizabeth worked as an assistant in the pathology laboratory. Both parents made no secret of their desire for their son to follow in his father’s footsteps, either as a general practitioner or as a specialist in a field of his choosing. But Jacob possessed his own streak of independence, as exhibited by his strong reluctance to purchase a car. He felt the move was one of frugality and looking ahead. He had not considered that others in his life were affected by the choice, including his parents.

The preferences of his parents about his future fell on deaf ears. Jacob was a city boy, and his fascination with the teaching process went deeper than anything he might want to do with medicine. He became interested in differing styles of imparting information, especially those differences he had observed between public schools and those of his church. He attended Christ Episcopal Church, where he participated in Vacation Bible School and in the youth group. He enjoyed the athletic and intellectual activities offered by the church and the camaraderie he experienced as a member of the basketball team. He also