A few yards to the left, el-Kas, the fountain of ablution, continued to gurgle peacefully, its purifying waters splashing and glistening in the sun. A sharp contrast to the pandemonium that surrounded it.
Harry looked around once more, his eyes alert for trouble, then he pulled his jacket open and shoved the .45 back into its holster.
Time to stand down. Reaching up, Harry activated his earpiece radio. “EAGLE SIX to LONGBOW, it’s time for you to leave. Exfil before they lock this city down. Standard E&E protocols apply.”
There was a moment’s hesitation, then Thomas’s voice came back through the speaker in Harry’s ear. “What happened to FULLBACK?”
“I killed him,” Harry responded quietly, looking across the courtyard. He disconnected the comm radio without another word, seeing Hamid’s face before his eyes. The way he had looked lying there. He heard Tex’s voice distantly and looked back at the big man. “What?”
“The bomb’s been disarmed.”
Harry ran a hand over his forehead, unable to find the words to express his feelings at that moment. His legs felt suddenly rubbery, weak as the adrenaline left his body.
Unusually, Tex was still talking. “I found this cellphone in his jacket. Doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the bomb, but Langley might want to take a look at it.”
Harry barely heard him. The threat had been neutralized…
“We’ve got a situation developing on the Temple Mount,” Shoham’s aide announced, appearing without warning in the doorway of his office.
The general looked up. “What’s going on?”
“A man in the crowd gathered for prayer at al-Aqsa mosque was shot by a sniper. The security forces of the Mufti have cordoned off the area and aren’t letting anyone through. Our personnel have been pushed back toward the Gate of the Chain.”
“The Lions of Jehovah,” Shoham snarled, a grimace contorting his features. “Blast it! Do they have any idea where the sniper is?”
“No, sir.”
“Get Laner on the phone ASAP.”
Despite the best efforts of both the Israeli police and Husayni’s men, the situation was far from being under control. Both sides now seemed to be engaged in a Mexican standoff about a hundred yards from the front of al-Aqsa, tensions growing by the minute.
“It seemed to come from somewhere in the Christian quarter,” Gideon responded, struggling to hear the general on the other end of the connection. “My guess would be one of the church towers in the area was used as a sniper hide. I sent Yossi and Chaim over there right after the shot. If he’s smart, he’ll shoot and scoot, but they might find something worthwhile.”
“Right now,” Shoham replied, “I want you to focus on the situation there on the Temple Mount. Get things settled, get Husayni’s bully boys to stand down. We can’t have this spreading to the streets.”
Gideon took another look across the wide plaza and nodded grimly. Easier said than done. “Roger that…”
It was time to go. Thomas left the Barrett laying where it was, the magazine still inserted. There was no way he could make it out of the city carrying it.
He drew his combat knife from its ankle sheath and motioned toward the girl, kneeling beside her and carefully slicing the zip ties that had bound her wrists and ankles.
“Go home,” he whispered, looking into her eyes. Her expression didn’t change, as though she had withdrawn to some place deep within herself. Gone was the uncertainty, the regret he had seen earlier, replaced by a dangerous calm. A sense of purpose.
None of that mattered now. With a sigh, Thomas rose, sheathing the knife and turning his back on her. Four steps toward the stairs and he heard the girl move, heard the lethal scrape of metal against stone.
Beretta already drawn, he turned back to see the rifle cradled in her arms, the long, black barrel swinging toward him as she fumbled with the safety.
She looked up to see the pistol leveled in his hand and froze, fear and surprise washing over her face as she realized she’d been played.
The grim tableau lasted only moments. The Beretta coughed twice, 9mm slugs striking her center-of-mass, hammer blows to the chest knocking her back. Her legs went out from under her and she sprawled onto the balcony, dying.
“Forgive me,” Thomas murmured, holstering the pistol. She had chosen her own course, that was true, but he had laid it out, knowing how she would react, knowing she would carry out her misguided atonement. It felt like a murder. Perhaps the murderers were those who had sent her out in the first place.
He buttoned his jacket, shoving the latex gloves he had worn throughout the operation into a pocket. The only fingerprints on the gun were hers.
It was time to go…
“I’ve got to go out there,” Harry said, watching the confrontation play out on the screens of the surveillance cameras.
Tex looked at him, a look of intensity on his typically stoic face. “If you turn yourself in to the Israelis, this mission is blown. The Israeli government will imprison you, the Agency will deny your existence. That will be the end, Harry.”
Harry nodded, his mind flickering back to Hamid’s words as he lay dying on the carpet of the masjid. It was fated to end like this, Harry. There is no escaping the will of Allah.
He couldn’t just stand there.
“There’s no way I’m going let him win,” he said finally, moving toward the door. He heard Tex call out to stop him, ignored the voice of his friend. In the end, the mission was the only thing that mattered. All else was illusory, friendship most of all. He had killed a friend this day.
His footsteps took him up the ancient stone stairs from which Hamid and Harun had fallen only a couple hours before. It seemed as though a lifetime had passed in the interim. Come and gone.
At the door to the outside he paused, removing the Colt 1911 from his holster. His thumb hit the release and he heard the sound of the loaded magazine striking the stone floor between his feet. His hands moving quickly over the gun, he racked the slide, ejecting the chambered round.
There was a tinkle of brass against stone and he bent down to retrieve the cartridge, laying it and the gun reverently to the side of the door, covering it with his jacket. The big pistol had saved his life too many times to count but all that was past. It couldn’t save him now.
If the Israelis forced their way into the masjid, in the wake of everything that had gone before, Jerusalem would erupt in violence. And with it the Middle East. All their sacrifice would have been for nothing. All the blood, the tears. Davood…
The noonday sun shone down upon his face as he strode out unarmed into the courtyard on the east of al-Aqsa, a cool north wind rippling through his dark hair.
He felt nothing. Anger. Remorse. Betrayal. They had all come and gone like strangers in the night, leaving him cold, empty. He knew only what he had to do.
There was no identification on either of the bodies, which wasn’t surprising in the least. One had been shot, the other — well, from the position of his body it looked as though he had fallen from the belfry, breaking nearly every bone in his body.
But, they had been players, Sergeant Eiland reflected grimly, which couldn’t be said for the middle-aged Palestinian lying dead in the narthex of the church below, his throat slashed by a knife. The doorkeeper of the sanctuary, apparently, which meant there would be the devil to pay with the Lutheran church.