Taking a deep breath, he pressed with his arms, raising his torso while pulling up his legs, until he reached a sitting position. An explosion of stars swirled before his eyes, and he nearly passed out again, staving off slumber by breathing deeply. Resting a few minutes until the dizziness and nausea passed, he noticed a cool dampness on his back. Rubbing a hand across the back of his head, he felt a stinging knot that was caked with dried blood.
The gears in his mind slowly began churning as he recognized his surroundings. Sitting alone in the empty cavern, he immediately called out to Sophie in a weakened voice. Only silence countered his ringing ears. Grabbing the lantern, he painfully rose to his feet, the pounding in his skull rising to new proportions as he staggered about like a drunk.
He gradually regained his strength and steadiness as he searched around the cavern, then crawled out the passageway. The cemetery appeared dark and silent around him, so he quickly reentered the quarry.
He shouted for her again, this time in a stronger voice that echoed through the chamber. From deep inside one of the tunnels, he thought he heard a faint slap in reply. Though his hearing was far from optimal, the sound, if real, seemed to emanate from the large tunnel to his right. It was the same tunnel that Maria and her men had entered with the explosives.
Ducking slightly as he entered the six-foot-high tunnel, Dirk moved as briskly as his throbbing head would allow. Unbeknownst to him, the tunnel stretched more than two hundred yards into the hillside, bisecting the grounds of the Haram ash-Sharif several feet above his head. Of greater importance to the bombers was its proximity to the Dome of the Rock, burrowing beneath it to within a few yards of the revered rock itself.
The tunnel curved and twisted, occasionally passing through small chambers where pockets of limestone had neatly been quarried away. As Dirk rounded a tight bend, he detected a faint light glowing from the tunnel ahead. With the skip of a heartbeat, he forced himself to double his pace, ignoring the pounding ache that shot through his head with each labored step.
The distant light brightened as he jogged through a small, rectangular chamber, then into a straight section of tunnel. Chasing the beckoning rays, he staggered out of the tunnel and into a final chamber that curved around like a punch bowl. Parked in the center was one of the electric lanterns. To his right, Dirk saw a mass of clear puttylike material pressed onto the wall with several wire detonators dangling from its core. To his left lay Sophie, squirming and wriggling, a gag in her mouth and her feet and wrists bound with straps from a backpack. A large rock had been placed between her knees, effectively pinning her to the ground. When she gazed at Dirk, the terror in her glistening eyes quickly vanished.
“I see you’re trying to have a blast without me,” he said with a weary grin.
But he didn’t give her the opportunity to reply. Heaving the rock from between her legs, he hoisted her over his shoulder, then grabbed both lanterns with his free hand. Finding renewed strength, he quickly shuffled back down the tunnel, careful not to bang her head against the low ceiling.
He carried her more than half the distance to the main cavern before dizziness reappeared in full force. Reaching the small chamber, he gently set her on the ground and removed her gag as he caught his breath.
“You look terrible,” she said. “Are you badly hurt?”
“I’m fine,” he grunted. “You were the one with the worries.”
“What time is it?” she asked hurriedly.
“Five minutes to one,” Dirk replied, gazing at his watch.
“The explosives. The woman said they were set to detonate at one a.m.”
“Let ’em blow. Let’s just get out of here.”
“No.”
Dirk was startled by the tone in her voice. It was less of a request than a demand.
“If the Dome and the mosque are destroyed, it will mean disaster for my country. War will ensue like no other we have seen.”
Dirk looked into Sophie’s dark eyes, seeing determination, hope, love, and despair. With the seconds ticking, he knew he couldn’t hope to win a debate on the matter.
“I think I can disable the detonator,” he said, untying her hands. “But you’ve got to get out of here. Here’s an extra lantern. Untie your feet and head for the exit.”
He turned to run back into the tunnel, but she grabbed his shirt and pulled him close for a quick but passionate kiss.
“Be careful,” she said. “I love you.”
His mind in a whirl, Dirk took off running. Her words seemed to extinguish all pain, and he found himself nearly sprinting through the tunnel. In a matter of seconds, he charged into the last chamber and approached the plastic explosives.
As a marine engineer, he had a rudimentary knowledge of explosives, having worked on salvage projects where underwater demolitions had been required. Though he was unfamiliar with the HMX explosives, the detonating technology in front of him was a common configuration. A single electronic timer fuze was wired to a string of detonator caps, which in turn were embedded in the explosives.
He glanced at his watch, seeing it was three minutes to one.
“Don’t blow early,” he muttered under his breath as he held the light to the wall.
He quickly searched the plastic explosives for additional fuzes, not realizing the quantity of HMX in front of him was enough to level a skyscraper. Finding only the one fuze, he grabbed hold of it and yanked it from the wall. The fuze, with its associated detonator caps, slipped freely from the HMX. With the blasting device dangling in his hand, Dirk took off running back down the tunnel.
He soon reached the now-dark and empty rectangular chamber, where he was thankful to see by her absence that Sophie had heeded his directions to flee. He stopped for a moment and hurled the fuze assembly against the far wall of the chamber, then dashed into the tunnel. With a sense of relief and fading adrenaline, he stepped into the main chamber, the pain in his head renewing its friendship. He made his way across the dark cavern, noticing for the first time that the body of the Palestinian was no longer there.
Squeezing through the entry tunnel, he welcomed the fresh air outside by sucking in several deep breaths, then glanced around for Sophie. Not spotting her or her light, he flicked off his own lantern momentarily, then called out her name. Neither her light nor her voice responded.
Then a sick feeling suddenly hit Dirk like a blow to the belly. The mosque. Sophie had said that the Dome and the mosque would be destroyed. There must be a second set of explosives for the mosque, and Sophie was inside trying to deactivate it.
Dirk shot back through the passageway like an arrow. Inside the main cavern, there were three small tunnels bored into the hillside to the left of the Dome tunnel. Dirk raced to the entrance of each, shouting out Sophie’s name down the dark corridors. At the entrance to the last tunnel, he heard a garbled reply, and recognized her silky voice calling from the distance. He immediately burst into the tunnel, running at a sprint through the chiseled corridor.
He’d taken only a few steps when he heard a popping noise in the distance, like a short string of firecrackers exploding. It was the detonators that he had pulled free beneath the Dome, now igniting harmlessly in the rectangle chamber.
Dirk’s heart pounded like a sledgehammer as he realized the second cache would detonate at any second.
“Sophie… get out of there… now!” he shouted between pounding breaths.
Ahead in the tunnel he could see a faint glimmer of light, and he knew he was getting closer. Then he heard another series of pops, and he dove to the floor with an agonized heart.
The explosion shook the ground like an earthquake, accompanied by an earsplitting boom. Seconds later, the expanding force of exploding gasses burst through the tunnel with a roaring gust, blowing a shower of dust and rock in front of it. Dirk felt his body lift off the ground and slam into the wall, knocking the breath out of him. Hammered by rock and buried in a blanket of choking dust, he felt the world around him once again turn to black.