Erin took a quick peek into the hallway, then darted across the hall to the master bedroom. She cleared that room and caught Jon’s eye again.
Downstairs, she signaled, then come back up on the other side.
He climbed into the elevator and headed down. When the doors reopened, he crossed through the former ops center and found the other elevator shaft on the opposite wing. He climbed in and pressed the button.
Nothing happened.
He pressed it again. Still nothing. It was out of order, and suddenly he could feel perspiration running down his back.
The main floor was now stone silent.
The whispers had ceased. Whoever was out there knew she was here too.
Erin did another quick peek down the hallway. That’s when they unleashed. She pulled back and pressed herself against the bedroom wall, only to see the wall at the end of the hallway torn to shreds by twenty or thirty rounds of automatic-weapons fire.
As soon as the shooting stopped for a moment, she pivoted around, squeezed off six rounds, and dove back into the walk-in closet. She hit the elevator button and waited. Gunfire erupted again in the hall. There were two of them, she realized. One would fire a short burst, then the other. They were tag teaming down the hallway. They were coming for her, and they could be only eight or ten yards away at most by now.
Erin pressed the elevator button again. She could hear the muffled sounds of the motor kicking in, but it was still a good ten seconds away. She didn’t have that long.
33
Bennett could hear the gunfire above him.
It was moving east to west, toward Erin. Should he go back up the west elevator? And do what? He still had no weapon. If Erin was pinned down, the only good he could do would be to try to ambush these guys from behind. But how?
Desperate, he checked every door for a stairway to the main floor, but found none. Instead, he ducked back into the broken elevator and noticed an access panel in the ceiling. He grabbed an old wooden chair, set it in the elevator, climbed on top of it, and pushed the access panel free, then pulled himself up onto the top of the elevator.
The shaft was nearly pitch-black, pierced only by the lights inside the elevator carriage itself. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to find the metal maintenance ladder bolted to the side of the back wall, and that’s all he needed. A moment later, Bennett reached the top of the ladder. He pried open the elevator door, climbed onto the main floor, and found himself in a closet in one of the east-wing guest rooms. That put him at the far end of the house. Now the shooting stopped, but the gunman let fly a storm of profanities.
Bennett’s only solace: if Erin were dead, he had no doubt the cursing would stop.
Despite the cursing, Erin could hear the elevator rising behind her.
She could also hear both men ejecting spent magazines. It was her only chance and she took it. She pumped five shots through the closet wall into the hallway and hit pay dirt. Someone dropped to the floor. She lowered her aim and fired five more shots through the drywall into the hallway. The screaming ceased, but now someone else was approaching, and he was coming fast.
Just then the elevator door opened behind her. She dove in, hit the down button, and dropped to the floor as a barrage of AK-47 fire filled the closet.
Bennett knew he had to move quickly.
He rummaged through the closet looking for a weapon, but all he found were clothes Mordechai hadn’t worn in years and would never wear again. He scanned the guest room but found nothing. The kitchen was on the other side of the house — with knives, a meat cleaver — but he’d never reach it in time. He glanced into the hallway. No one was there. He slid off his shoes, then eased open the guest-room door and worked his way toward the great room, terrified of making a sound and drawing gunfire he couldn’t return. He found no one there or on the stairs. Nor could he see anyone outdoors on the deck overlooking the Old City. For the moment, at least, the coast was clear.
He made his move, darting behind one of the leather couches and then working his way around to the fireplace. There he stopped for a moment to slow his breathing. He could hear one of the intruders probing room by room. Whoever it was, he obviously had never been in the house before, Bennett realized. He had no idea about the secret elevator. Was that where Erin had gone?
Bennett glanced at his watch. The sun would be coming up before long, and they desperately needed to be able to make their way back to their temporary residence in the Moslem Quarter before daybreak, or there would be no place for them to hide. If he was going to do anything, it had to be now.
Slowly, carefully, Bennett removed one of the cast-iron pokers from the stand beside Mordechai’s fireplace. Then he moved toward the hallway leading to the west wing and tried to steady his breathing. A few moments later, as he’d anticipated, he heard footsteps. They were heavy and determined and were coming quickly down the hall toward him. He raised the poker like a baseball bat and waited. When the gunman came through the archway into the great room, Bennett swung for the fences.
The man was huge, at least six feet six, maybe 250 pounds, but he was caught completely off guard by the force of the poker, which struck him square across the upper lip, just below the nose. His head snapped back. He lost his footing and crashed onto his back. His weapon skidded across the hardwood floor toward the stairs.
Bennett leaped for it. Seconds later, he had the AK-47 in his hands. He pivoted quickly to face his assailant, but it was too late. The man was already on top of him, knocking the gun away and pounding him with his fists. Bennett was stunned. He had no idea how the man could have recovered so quickly, but it hardly mattered. The two of them were now hurtling down the stairs, and soon they hit the floor with a bone-crunching thud.
The man’s hands closed like a vise around Bennett’s neck. They were squeezing, squeezing. Bennett couldn’t break free. He was gagging and choking, but there was nothing he could do to wrest himself from the man’s grip. A wave of panic washed over him. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t think, and then — without warning — a single gunshot exploded in his ears. Bennett saw the man’s life drain from his eyes. He watched the man slump to the floor, blood pouring out of his mouth, and an involuntary shudder rippled through Bennett’s system.
He shoved the body off of him and rolled away to safety. When he looked up, he saw his wife at the top of the stairs, the Beretta still pointed at the fallen man’s head, the acrid stench of gunpowder once again thick in the air. They stared at each other for a moment, and Bennett realized how close they had both once again come to dying in this house.
Erin lowered her gun, scanned the great room behind her one last time, then made her way down the stairway. Bennett got up and went to embrace her but Erin stopped him abruptly.
“Your BlackBerry,” she said as she pulled out her own.
“What about it?” asked Jon.
“Do you have it on you?”
“Of course,” he replied. “Why?”
“Quick, turn it off,” she replied as she did the same. “They must have tracked us here. That’s how they found us. They triangulated the signals from our phones. We need to get out of here — fast.”