“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.”
Nick emerged from the tunnel into a wide plaza and jogged to a halt amid a throng of eclipse-watchers. To the east rose a shining limestone wall, spotted with tufts of green rock plant. A crowd of worshippers at its base stuffed tiny prayer scrolls into the cracks between the stones. At the top, in the same place where Katy had stood and the fire had risen up in his vision at the bottom of the Thames, he saw the flaming golden dome of the Qubbat As-Sakhrah, the Dome of the Rock, brilliant in the light of the morning sun.
“The mosque?” asked Drake, following his gaze.
“Not the dome itself,” said Nick, panting to catch his breath, “the flat stone inside. The Hashashin believe that rock is a portal, and I think they’re planning to blow it wide open.”
CHAPTER 72
A dense mass of tourists threatened to overwhelm the spindly ramp leading up to the metal detectors at the Moors Gate, the only access to the Temple Mount open to non-Muslims. Nick had run through the market toward that gate on memory and instinct. Now he realized they could not get through, not even by fighting their way through the line. The ramp was too narrow and the crowd too thick.
“The SWARM still has nothing,” said Drake, looking down at the tablet.
Nick shielded his eyes to gaze up at the drones. “Release them. Send them east. We’re confined to one gate, but Muslims can use the gates to the north and east. We’ve already covered the north.”
Drake did as commanded, and as soon as the SWARM flew over the wall, an alarm sounded from the tablet. The southernmost drone picked up a radiation signature. The formation automatically shifted southeast to compensate, with the eastern bird picking up the signature next, and then the northern one. In half a minute, they had centered over a radiation source in the archaeological park south of the Temple Mount. There, under the crosshairs, was a man dressed in loose-fitting desert garb — a long tan shirt and olive trousers — with a black-and-tan shemagh around his neck. He carried a large gray backpack slung over one shoulder.
“Bingo,” said Drake, and the two of them started cutting through the crowd toward the southern exit from the plaza.
“Is it Kattan?” asked Molly, over the SATCOM.
“Unknown,” said Nick, as he and Drake stutter-stepped through the crowd. “We couldn’t see his face.” He shot a glance at the screen in Drake’s hands. The target continued to work his way north and west through the labyrinth of walkways and stairwells of the archaeological park, entering the sparse ruins of a seventh-century Arabian palace that once stood against the Temple Mount wall. He seemed completely unaware of the drones. “He’s heading for the middle of the south wall, Lighthouse. Where is he going? There’s no gate there.”
After a long moment of silence on the SATCOM, Molly came back with her answer. “My guess is he’s heading for the southern access to your plaza, west of the temple. From there, he’ll make for the Cotton Merchants gate, two hundred yards north. You’re on a course to intercept now.”
Seconds later, Nick and Drake popped out of the crowd near the southern access Molly had described. The drones were still southeast of them.
“We’ve got him,” said Drake, slowing to check his tablet.
Nick clicked off the safety of the M4 rifle and checked the video as well, but the man with the backpack did not continue toward their position. He turned due north and disappeared beneath the sand-colored ruins of an archway that jutted out from the southern wall of the Temple Mount. The SWARM continued north for a moment, turned east, turned north again, and then hovered there, making tiny adjustments in all directions.
Nick’s world grew a shade darker. The eclipse was more than halfway through. He stared at the tablet in disbelief. “He’s gone.”
Drake grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the plaza exit. “No. Look at the drones.” He pointed to the sky where the SWARM still hovered. Occasionally the UAVs jerked one way or another in a synchronized dance that kept them centered on the radiation source. “They still have him. He’s gone down a hole, probably planting the bomb right now.”
The two operatives hopped the turnstile that separated the plaza from the archaeological park and raced toward the ruins.
Nick was the first to reach the area where the terrorist had disappeared. In the shadow of the crumbling archway, he found a set of steps leading down. “There’s a tunnel here,” he said in a low voice, depending on the SATCOM for Drake to hear.
The steps dropped only a short distance, but they turned east into a tunnel completely shaded from the half-eclipsed sun. Nick lit the flashlight on the rail of the Israeli M4, lifted the weapon to his shoulder, and moved cautiously forward. “What are the drones doing?” he whispered.
Drake had his pistol in his right hand and the tablet in his left. He raised the screen to his eyes. “Still hovering. The center point of the radiation is twelve meters ahead and ten meters left.”
“Left?” Nick put a hand against the stone wall next to him. “Left is solid rock.”
“That’s what it says.”
On a hunch, Nick let his fingers drag along the wall. The vines and weedy rock plants in the cracks grew increasingly thicker until he came to a point where his fingers lost contact with the stone. He stopped, pressed his hand deeper, and only found more plants. “There’s a passage here.”