If He wasn’t lying or crazy, then He would have to be the Messiah. He would have to be Lord. Which would mean that when He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” He would have to be telling the truth. She wasn’t sure if she could believe that. She wasn’t sure if—
Natasha suddenly heard automatic gunfire coming from somewhere else in the tunnels. She feared the worst. Was it Erin fighting for her life, or Jon? She couldn’t just lie here. She had to do something. She knew it could be a trap, luring her out into the open. Yet everything in her urged her forward.
She got to her feet.
The gunfire seemed louder. Was it coming her way? Natasha couldn’t pinpoint its source, but it definitely seemed to be coming closer. Her fear grew.
A massive explosion shook the caverns. Then another. And a third. She gripped the Uzi in her hands and tried to imagine how this could possibly end well. She knew she should pray, but how? She didn’t know how to begin or what to say.
The tunnel was suddenly filled with a blinding light. A split second later, she heard the explosion, felt the force of the blast, and knew exactly what was happening. It was a flash grenade. Their pursuers were systematically throwing one grenade after another into the tunnels to kill them or smoke them out, and now they’d found her.
And then she heard more automatic-weapons fire — very close — and felt the bullets tearing into her flesh.
67
The flash grenade had exposed Natasha to her enemies.
But it had a second, if unintended, effect. It revealed — for a moment, at least — where their attackers were positioned, and both Jon and Erin seized the moment and opened fire. The tunnels filled again with fire and tracer rounds and a deafening roar as the Bennetts fought to save their friend.
A moment later, Erin shouted, “Jon, someone’s coming your way.”
It was still almost impossible to see people moving about. But Bennett took his wife’s word by faith, if not by sight. He sprayed the entrance to the central tunnel with submachine-gun fire, back and forth until he heard someone cry out in pain and drop to the ground with a thud.
“Got him,” he shouted back.
“Great. I think I got one, too.”
The gun battle raged on for another quarter of an hour. Every few seconds, Bennett rolled to one side of his tunnel, fired off a few rounds, then rolled to the center, fired again, and so forth, constantly changing his pattern, constantly trying to keep his hunters off balance. At one point, he pulled out his flashlight, turned it on, then moved to the other side of the tunnel as fast as he could. Predictably, the light drew fire, thus exposing the enemy’s position. Bennett unleashed half a magazine before the man’s screaming stopped and he made no other sounds.
And then, as quickly as it had begun, it seemed, all the shooting stopped.
Bennett lay still in the darkness, and time lost all meaning. Had it been ten minutes? twenty? a half hour? more? He strained for any possible sound, any shred of evidence that his pursuers were still alive, or that Erin and Natasha were. He could see nothing, not even the ground inches from his face. He could hear nothing but the pounding of his own heart. He prayed continuously for his wife, for her safety and comfort, and for Natasha. Were they alive? Was it safe to go find them?
Suddenly there was a tap on his shoulder.
Terrified, he instinctively turned and pointed the Uzi into the darkness. He was about to pull the trigger when Erin whispered, “Jon, it’s okay, it’s okay — it’s me.”
“Thank God,” said Bennett. “How did you — I–I almost shot you. Where are you?”
Erin turned on her flashlight, covering most of the bulb with her left hand.
Trembling — but relieved — Bennett embraced her tightly as she turned off the flashlight, and they sat in the dark.
“How did you find me?” he asked.
“I heard you.”
“What?”
“I heard you praying.”
“You did?”
“I think you were also reciting the Twenty-third Psalm.”
“Out loud?” asked Bennett in disbelief.
“Believe me,” Erin whispered back, “it was a total answer to my prayers.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean when all the shooting stopped and everything got quiet, I was praying for wisdom — you know, when to move, when to find you. Then in the distance I heard a voice. It was faint, but for some reason I just started moving toward it. It was so soft, so quiet, I thought it might be Natasha.”
“Have you found her?”
“No, not yet.”
“You think we’re clear?”
“I don’t know,” Erin said. “But, hey, I’m taking the fact that you weren’t shot dead for praying out loud as a pretty good sign.”
If he wasn’t still so anxious, Bennett might have laughed out loud. “You think if someone was going to take a shot, he’d have done it by now?” he asked.
“That’s my guess,” said Erin. “It’s been almost forty-five minutes since the last shots were fired.”
Bennett couldn’t believe it had been that long. He stood up and turned on his flashlight. Erin squeezed his hand, apparently more worried than she’d let on. He stood motionless for a moment, waiting, wondering what would happen next. But nothing did. It was quiet. So Erin followed suit, and there was still no gunfire.
Uzis at the ready, they shone their flashlights around the tunnel and found a man lying facedown at the entrance. Erin crouched and checked for a pulse while Bennett aimed at the man’s chest. He was Caucasian, thirtyish, maybe thirty-five, with dark hair, olive skin, and a five o’clock shadow. But he was dead all right. Erin counted four bullet holes, though there may have been more. She picked up his weapon and checked for an ID of some kind. There was none.
They quickly spotted two more bodies, lying at the entrance to the tunnel Erin had been hiding in. Bennett rounded up their weapons and checked for IDs, but again there was nothing. Then they turned their flashlights farther down the tunnel to see if they could find any other bodies, and suddenly they couldn’t breathe.
Twenty yards away was an opening in the tunnel wall. It had previously been hidden by large stones, but apparently the force of the grenade blasts had created an entrance. They grabbed their backpacks, raced forward, and began feverishly clearing the rubble. When they were done, they entered a world they could hardly have imagined.
Inside was an enormous room, ringed by iron torchstands, none of which seemed ever to have been used. Bennett found a box of matches in his pack and lit the torch closest to them, and the room filled with light.
Both he and Erin gasped, for before them stood three mountains of gold and silver and bronze coins, each towering at least twenty feet in the air. And that was just the beginning. As they cautiously inched their way forward, they continued lighting torches and finding more treasures. In one chamber they found ten gold lampstands, hundreds of solid gold sprinkling bowls, and piles of gold censers and dishes, all stacked on and below ten tables. In another chamber, at least as large, they found thousands of bricks made of pure gold. Yet another room was stacked floor to ceiling with bricks of pure silver, along with hundreds of gold items that looked like fruit of some kind — apples or perhaps pomegranates. The chamber beside that one held gold wick trimmers, gold tongs, gold nails and firepans and spoons, silver and bronze basins, pots, shovels, meat forks, and other articles related to the Temple sacrificial system.
Bennett’s mind reeled. They had done it — almost by accident, it seemed, but they had done it.