“Is he short?”
“He’s a she. And I doubt she weighs more than a buck fifteen with her boots on.”
Nick found the Israeli’s pickup parked on an overgrown asphalt pad a short distance away. He and Drake loaded up the equipment and the unconscious patrol and followed a gravel road inland until they found a long low concrete bunker half-buried in the weeds. They laid the patrol inside and bound them hand and foot. Nick took the male’s uniform, but they left the girl dressed, taking only her boots and socks to limit her mobility.
When Drake stripped out of his dry suit, he was already wearing a set of khaki pants, but his chest was bare. He dug in his duffel for a few seconds and emerged with the blue and white Hawaiian shirt from the Coptic church.
“You can’t be serious,” said Nick.
Drake slipped the shirt over his head. “No time to argue. We’ve got a nuke to find.”
The big operative started for the bunker door, but Nick stopped him with a hand to his chest. “I don’t want you to come.”
“Look, boss, the shirt stays. Deal with it.”
Nick shook his head. “No. You don’t understand. You got me this far. Now I go it alone. As far as Kattan is concerned, you’re just another chess piece.” He pointed to the east. “Somewhere out there is a bullet with your name on it, for no other reason than to torture me. If I let you come, I’m giving Kattan exactly what he wants.”
Drake frowned at his teammate. “Don’t be ridiculous. This is what he wants. He wants you isolated. Alone.” He pushed by Nick and headed for the truck, calling to him over his shoulder. “And as long as I’m still breathing, boss, that’s not going to happen.”
CHAPTER 69
The Israeli Defense Forces pickup had a light bar and a siren, and Nick used them both liberally to cut through the traffic as he sped southeast through Jerusalem, doing his best to beat the rising sun. The most likely targets for the nuke were those within the walls of the Old City—more than a dozen churches, synagogues, and Biblical sites that would make definitive spiritual and political statements as epicenters for the final blast—but when Nick came to a sign that said OLD CITY: DAMASCUS GATE with an arrow pointing due south, he took the road southwest instead.
“Wrong way, boss,” said Drake, turning to watch the sign pass behind them.
Nick flipped on the lights again and swerved around the car ahead of them. “Got to make a stop first. We have to get my family.”
“No. Not a good tactical plan.”
“Says the guy in the gaudy Hawaiian shirt.”
Drake’s voice grew deadly serious. “Listen. I know your family comes before everyone else, but we don’t have time. It won’t do your dad or your wife and kid any good if you find them the moment the nuke goes off.”
“Who’s driving the truck?”
Drake frowned. “You are.”
“Are you planning on Tasing me or shooting me or something?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Then shut up.”
A few minutes later, Nick parked the truck on the street outside the King David Hotel. He looked ahead at the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the road east toward the Old City. “Have Molly order me a cab for three to Ben Gurion International,” he said, jumping out of the driver’s seat. “Then get the equipment ready. We walk from here.”
Inside the hotel, Nick raced across gold and purple marble tiles to the back of the lobby. He bypassed the elevators and took the stairs two and three at a time up to the fourth floor. Finally, breathing hard, he banged on the door to his wife’s room. “Katy!”
There was no response.
He tried one more time, but as he pounded, Katy stuck her head out of the room next door. “Nick?”
Nick checked the room numbers. “I thought you were—”
Katy waved her hand and shook her head. “Your dad and I switched rooms. The hotel put the crib in the wrong one. What are you doing here?”
He pushed past her, heading straight for the phone by the bed. “Don’t you and Dad check your messages?”
The little orange light on the phone wasn’t blinking. He picked up the receiver and pressed the retrieve button.
“You have no messages,” declared a cheerful recorded voice, and then it repeated the statement in Hebrew and French. It appeared Kattan had tampered with the lines to head off Nick’s warnings, which meant he had these rooms under surveillance.
Nick slammed the handset into its cradle. “We have to get you out of here.” He went to the drawers beneath the TV and started pulling out clothes, throwing them at her suitcase a few feet away. “You and Dad are leaving Jerusalem. Now. Get Luke ready.”
When Katy started to argue, Nick lost what calm he had left. He whipped around with a shirt and a pair of her jeans clenched in his fists. “Just do as I say for once!”
That was enough to subdue her, although the look in Katy’s eyes told Nick he would pay for the outburst later. He hoped so. He hoped they would have a later. When he finished, he zipped up her rolling suitcase and yanked it off the rack. “You have cash?”
“Plenty.”
Nick snapped his fingers and motioned with an open palm. “Give me a fifty. Where’s Dad?”
“He had an early meeting with Avi.”
“Did he say where?”
“Only that it was one of their old haunts, something about a garden.”
By the time they reached the shaded drive out front, the cab was waiting. Nick hurried Katy into the back, tossed the child seat in beside her, and set Luke in her lap. “You have to go.”
“Luke isn’t buckled in.”
“Buckle him in on the way. Get the next flight out, even if you have to pay for a whole new ticket.” He kissed her hard and then kissed his son’s hand. Luke giggled and smiled at his daddy.
Katy stared up at him, fighting back tears. “Nick, what is going on? What is this about?”
Nick didn’t answer. He closed her door and tossed the fifty through the front window. “That’s the first half of your tip,” he told the cabby. “She’ll give you the rest when you get there.” He pounded the top of the car. “Tel Aviv. Ben Gurion Airport. Go!”
—
Kurt Baron sat alone in the lush courtyard at the American Colony Hotel, sipping a cup of English tea and listening to the water trickling down from a jade fountain. He pulled his fleece jacket close around him. The garden was still chilly and dark, the varied greens of its vines all muted gray by the shadows.
This hotel had offered visitors and expats a refuge from the turmoil of Jerusalem for more than a century, since the days of the British protectorate. Kurt remembered sitting here during his postgraduate studies, waiting for the first golden rays of morning to break over the eastern wall and spread across the bleached flagstone, bit by bit revealing the glory of this small Eden. In those days, he usually shared the experience with his fellow student, Avi. He had expected to share it with his old friend once more, but Avi had not yet arrived.
Kurt jumped as his phone buzzed with a text message. The thing hadn’t made a peep since the day before. He checked the screen. Avi made his apologies. The Israeli professor had been called to an early faculty meeting. He suggested rescheduling tea for an hour and a half later on the Temple Mount Plaza, another one of their favorite spots from the old days. I’ll bring the tea, said the text. You bring the pastries.
Kurt smiled at the notion of the pastries. These days, Avi’s wife placed very stringent restrictions on his diet. She did not allow him such pleasures. Kurt started typing his response.
—
On a dead end street, a block away from the American Colony, Avi Bendayan sat behind the wheel of his car. Masih Kattan sat next to him.
When Kurt Baron’s response came through, Kattan picked up the phone and patted Avi on the arm, causing the dead professor’s hea
d to slump to one side, stretching out the deep, bloody gash in his throat.
Kattan checked the message. Avi, I’ll be there with the pastries. What Panina doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
The terrorist smiled. What a silly thing to say.
CHAPTER 70
Amran Jazar, the Hashashin lieutenant who had dutifully delivered the lithium-6 three days before in Cairo, parked a yellow taxi at the edge of the Palestinian village of Ras Al-Amud, east of Jerusalem. The crescent-topped spire of the town mosque on the hilltop above cast a long shadow westward across the deep Kidron Valley. That valley separated the Mount of Olives from the Noble Sanctuary—the Temple Mount, as it was known to the infidels—and many scholars and prophets claimed that it would one day be soaked with the blood of Armageddon. So, thought Amran, it would.
Amran’s journey to Jerusalem had taken nearly fifteen hours, beginning the moment Dr. Wahish finished his work. More precisely, it began the moment Amran slit the physicist’s throat—the same way he slit the throat of the Syrian who had brought them the virus. The Emissary had been clear. There was to be no trail, no witnesses that could be captured and questioned to jeopardize the final goal. Amran had carried the device away in an unobtrusive gray backpack, leaving nothing behind in the old watchtower but a white-haired Pakistani, facedown in a sticky black pool of his own blood.
From Cairo, Amran had carried the weapon to Ismailia, on the edge of the Sinai, and then, at dusk, continued on into the desert. He crossed the Egyptian portion on an ATV; the Israeli portion on foot. Abandoning the vehicle cost him time, but taking a noisy ATV across the border would have been suicide.
When he finally reached the frontier city of Beersheba early that morning, Amran had simply hailed a cab—one with the yellow license plates that allowed service vehicles easy passage through West Bank checkpoints. The cab driver had stayed behind, bleeding out in a ditch north of town.
Now Amran climbed out of the vehicle with his backpack and tossed the keys on the floorboard. He did not bother to wipe clean the cab’s interior, not even the bloodstain on the driver’s door. This age of the world was ending. No one was ever going to trace this vehicle to him or to the Hashashin. At this range, the cab would not survive the hour anyway.
—
“I didn’t see your dad in that taxi.” Drake was standing in the back of the pickup with the crate’s lid open against the cab.
Nick pulled open the driver’s-side door. “He wasn’t there. Hop down and get in. I think I know where to find him. A place called the American Colony.”
Drake didn’t move. He folded his arms defiantly.
“Drake, come on!”
“We can’t, boss. We don’t have time to play hunches.”
Nick stood there with the door open another moment. His gaze shifted to the east, toward a thin line of low clouds, burned orange by the rising sun. The eclipse was coming. Drake was right. He hung his head in frustration. Then he reached into the cab, pulled out an M4 rifle he had taken from the patrol, and slammed the door shut again.
“Good choice,” said Drake, unfolding his arms. “Now get up here and tell me what I’m dealing with.”
Nick climbed into the back. Inside the crate were four miniature UAVs, each drone two feet square with four enclosed rotors, all stacked on a short pole launcher. Titanium plates reinforced the flattened corners of their rugged, olive drab frames. “This UAV system is called SWARM,” said Nick, removing a mini-tablet computer from the foam wall of the case. “Synchronized wireless aerial reconnaissance machines. They are multipurpose, but this set is fitted out to complement a helicopter-borne radiation detector. At best, a chopper system can narrow the search for a radiation source down to a city block. SWARM is the next step. Once the helicopter finds the area, three of these UAVs work in concert to triangulate the exact position.”
Drake rapped a knuckle on the side of the top drone. “And the fourth? The payload looks different.”
“That one has a high-def camera. It hovers over the target for real-time video.” Nick toyed with the tablet screen as he spoke. A green LED lit up on each drone, indicating linkup with the controller. “Unfortunately, we don’t have the helicopter to find the general area. These UAVs were designed to search one city block. Our search area is equivalent to a hundred.”
Drake lifted a hand to shield his eyes and looked out toward the Old City. “So we’re hunting for the proverbial needle in a haystack.”
“A needle that will go off in”—Nick checked his watch—“fifty-two minutes.” He flipped a switch on each UAV. The rotors hummed to life, and the little aircraft hovered on the pole, separated by a couple of inches each.
He handed the mini-tablet to Drake. “You have control. Use the green toggle to—”
The UAVs shot up into the air, almost knocking Nick out of the truck.
Drake laughed. “I think I can figure it out.”
“Right.” Nick glowered at his teammate. “Let’s get moving.”
They entered the worn stone streets of Old Jerusalem at the Jaffa gate, looking like an Israeli guard and an American tourist. Despite his bravado, Drake had a little trouble walking and controlling the SWARM at the same time. He bumped into several people in the crowd, none of whom noticed the quiet formation of four remote-control aircraft hovering two hundred feet over their heads.
After the big operative nearly ran down a small but very loud French woman, Nick took the tablet away. He locked a set of crosshairs onto his teammate. The central bird, the one with the high-def camera, took up a position directly above them. “There,” he said, handing it back. “Now they will follow wherever you go. We can release them when they get a whiff of the radiation.”
Drake looked down at his own image under the crosshairs. “Creepy.”
When they reached an open square inside the gates, Nick activated his SATCOM earpiece. “Lighthouse, any help?”
Molly was ready for him, but she didn’t have good news. “Sorry, Nightmare. We couldn’t get satellite coverage over Israel, not under State’s nose. However, based on your previous encounters with the Hashashin, you can expect two or three hostiles. One will have the bomb, plus one or two outriggers, armed with knives and machine guns. Watch the top floors and the crowds.”
Drake turned in a slow circle, searching the rooftops for snipers. “I hate these guys.”
“And the target?” asked Nick.
“Unknown. Too many potentials in the area. I’d start with the most famous crusader church in town.”
Drake’s Catholic upbringing rose to the surface. “The Church of St. Anne.”
“Correct,” said Molly.
Nick nodded. “I’ll buy that. Big crusader church. It definitely makes a statement. We can scan east from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on the way.”
“How much time?” asked Drake, squinting up at the drones hovering high above.
Nick checked his watch. The eclipse had already started. “If we’re right about the bomb, every man woman and child in this crowded city has less than forty-five minutes to live.”
CHAPTER 71
Over the next twelve minutes, Nick and Drake used the SWARM to scan seven holy sites, working northeast from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to the Church of St. Anne.
The UAVs found nothing.
The small plaza in front of St. Anne’s was nearly empty. There, the outer wall of the Old City rose high above the street, blocking the view of the eastern sky. The tourists had moved elsewhere to see the sun. “We’re running out of time,” said Drake, slumping into a plastic chair at an open-air café.
Nick sat down across the table and waved the waiter away. “We haven’t scanned a tenth of the city. This isn’t working. We have too much ground to cover.”
“Maybe Dr. Heldner was right,” offered Molly through the SATCOM. “Maybe there’s no nuke at all.”
/> Nick shook his head. “False hope. Everything we know points to a bomb, right here in Jerusalem, but there has to be something we’re missing. Read me the final stanza of the prophecy.”
“We’re wasting time,” protested Drake.
Nick held up a warning hand. “Read it, Molly.”
As the analyst carried out his order, Nick closed his eyes, letting the words sink into his consciousness, seeing them as three-dimensional structures and letting them float freely on their own. Somewhere in the open spaces between them was the answer he needed.
Then the sun will be blotted out and my servant will open the gate. A great smoke will rise up from the center of the world. The sky will burn like molten brass, and from the high place there will sound a deafening noise, as trumpets, announcing the entrance of the Mahdi.
Almost of their own accord, two small pieces of the whole separated and rose above the rest.
. . . my servant will open the gate.
. . . announcing the entrance of the Mahdi.
Nick’s eyes blinked open. “I know what the target is.” He stood up and left the café at a run.
—
As Drake rushed after his team lead, the SWARM stayed right above him, following like a flock of loyal geese. “Are you gonna share your thoughts with the rest of the class?”
“My servant will open the gate!” Nick shouted over his shoulder, heading west down the slanted Via Dolorosa, still well ahead of his friend. “The nuke isn’t a sign. It’s a key!”
Molly was unconvinced. “I’m showing a long list of gates surrounding the Old City of Jerusalem. Which one?”
“The one you don’t see.” Nick turned south from the empty street into a long corridor, crowded with tourists and vendors. He started weaving his way through knots of well-dressed pilgrims buying crosses and eclipse glasses from kids in soiled clothes and taqiyah skullcaps. “There’s a flat stone here,” he said as Drake finally caught up. “The Muslims think it’s the rock where Muhammad ascended into heaven. Some Jews and Christians believe it’s the place where heavenly fire burned up the offerings of King David.” He paused to dodge a rack of leather sandals and then turned sideways to scoot through a group of chattering schoolkids and into a narrow tunnel. “Either way, a lot of mystics think it’s a gateway between worlds.”