"Just step right in there," Blondie said. "No moves. You won't make it before you're dead."
The four of them stepped down into a small room of ancient, fitted stone. Another narrow tunnel led away into darkness. It was unlit. A large sign in three languages warned that the passage was unsafe and closed to tours.
"Let's see what's down there, shall we?" Blondie's companion pressed his pistol harder into Carter's back. He smelled of cigarettes.
"What do you want?" Nick said. "All I've got is traveler's checks. They won't do you any good."
"Shut up, asshole."
They moved past the sign and into the unlit passage.
Rivka said, "If you kill us, you'll never leave Israel alive. You know that, don't you?"
The woman sneered. "Shut your mouth, you Jewish bitch. You have no idea."
Nick glanced over at Rivka. She tipped her head, a tiny movement.
The couple were too close. It was a mistake to get too close. It cut down the advantage of a gun. Close was for instant killing strikes, or incapacitating an opponent.
Nick knocked the man's gun arm away with his elbow and drove stiffened fingers into the soft area below the sternum. His fingers slammed into a rigid surface and pain exploded in his hand. The man was wearing a Kevlar vest.
The gun went off. Nick felt the bullet tug at his jacket. His attacker staggered back, raised the gun. Nick's left hand was useless, his arm numb to the elbow. He threw a forearm strike to the throat. The man went down.
Rivka whirled and landed a vicious hit with her elbow to Blondie's kidney. The woman arched backward in pain and Rivka kicked the gun from her hand. It bounced along the stone floor. Nick pulled out his .45.
It should have been enough. The paralyzing blows should have ended it. The man brought up another pistol, his second mistake. Nick shot him in the face. The back of his head disintegrated in a thick spray of blood and bone that plastered the rock behind him. The round whined away down the passage.
"Jew bitch!"
The woman grabbed a snub nosed pistol from under her dress. Rivka fired twice and the yellow dress bloomed with red.
The shots echoed from the ancient stones.
Someone began yelling in the main tunnel outside. Waves of pain ran up Nick's arm. Ripples of light moved just behind his eyes. He held his left hand against his chest and bent over the man's body. He went through the pockets, looking for identification. Nothing. Rivka searched the woman's purse. She looked up, shook her head.
"Nothing here."
"Not here, either."
Nick felt where the bullet had grazed him. A rip in his shirt, a little blood, another ruined jacket. The pain began to subside in his arm.
"You all right?" Rivka looked at Nick.
"Yeah. They're dead."
Rivka's eyebrows went up. "You think? What gave you that impression?"
"I mean, they're not going to tell us much, are they?"
"Not in words. But they had to come from somewhere. We'll track them down." Rivka looked down at the woman and the blood pooling under the yellow dress.
"Somebody really doesn't like you, Nick."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A mixed tour group of college students waited to enter Solomon's Stables, at the south eastern corner of the Temple Mount. Security was tight. Students were allowed to carry only tourist guides and literature. Cameras were forbidden. Backpacks were forbidden. A pile of them was stacked outside the entrance under the watchful eye of a security guard.
A tall, blond man in his mid-twenties waited for the tour to begin. He was absorbed in a travel guide he held in his hand, reading about the Stables.
King Herod had built the chambers to support the southeastern corner of the Temple Mount, back in the first century, before the Temple had been destroyed by the Romans. The Stables covered an area of 5000 square feet. It was formed from a series of high, vaulted passages lined with eighty-eight rows of pillars and arches, some of the arches thirty feet wide. A thousand years after Herod, the Crusaders had stabled their horses there and left the name. Holes in the rock could still be seen where the Templar knights had tied the animals' reins. Now the Stables housed the el-Marwani mosque, open to tours except during prayers.
Thirteen meters above the floor of the cavernous space, preparations for President Rice's speech were under way. The halls and arches of the stables extended beneath the spot where Rice would stand and partway under the al-Aqsa Mosque.
The tour guide led his charges into the famous chambers and began his commentary. The students straggled in spite of the guide's admonitions. The tall young man drifted further behind the group, then ducked into one of the side passages.
He knew where to go. He stopped in a dim recess. He opened the book and removed the bomb. He checked his watch. He set the timer and molded the explosive against the stone, in the exact place where aerial sonar scans had shown a serious fracture in the bedrock supporting the mosque above.
It took only a minute. His father was going to be proud of him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Ronnie and Selena were on the rifle range at Quantico. Time to get Selena familiar with M4A1 rifles. Their sat phones signaled. Ronnie grunted when he read the message. Selena looked at her display.
Alpha Red.3P.FC.XG.E5.
"What…," Selena started to say. Ronnie placed his finger on her lips, shook his head. He tore a page from his pocket notepad and wrote on it.
Talk about the weapons. Act normal. Trouble.
Selena began loading magazines for the rifles. She asked him about the laser range finder.
"We'll get to it in a bit," Ronnie said. He rummaged around in his bag and took out a black metal box about eight inches square. He set it on the shooting bench and pressed a button. A green light began blinking on top of the box.
"We can talk now. This will scramble any electronic surveillance aimed at us. I'll fill you in, then we'll turn it off and get on with the guns. Don't say anything important unless this box is on."
"Ronnie, what's up? What's 'Alpha Red'?"
"I don't know what's up. Alpha Red is an emergency code. It means the shit has hit the fan."
"Nice choice of words. What's the rest of it?"
"3P means we meet the Director at three o'clock this afternoon. FC means change our sat phones to a shifting frequency. It's not much used."
"What about the rest?"
"XG means deactivate the GPS locator in the phones."
Ronnie took Selena's phone and entered the new frequency. He showed her how to shut down the signal that told anyone with access to the Global Positioning System where she was.
"E5 is something Stephanie set up," Ronnie said. "It routes email and the internet through so many countries and servers no one can find the point of origin."
"Where do we meet Harker?"
"At the Marine Corps War Memorial."
"What about Nick?"
"He'll get the message. He'll be all right."
Selena waited.
"We shoot for a while, like we planned." Ronnie gestured at the weapons. "We get back to the car, I'll run a sweep. It's all part of Alpha Red. Clear?"
Selena nodded. Ronnie turned off the box and put it back in his kit. He picked up a rifle. They'd been blacked out from eavesdroppers for less than a minute.
"You're familiar with the MP-5," Ronnie said, "so you know how to control rate of climb and get off a three round burst."
The Heckler and Koch MP-5 in its many variations was a favorite weapon of SOCOM units all over the world. Selena knew how to use it. It had been part of her baptism in blood.
"The M4A1 is different from the H-K, but the principles are the same. This is what most of our troops carry. It fires a 5.65 by 45 millimeter NATO round, high velocity, good penetration. After five or six hundred rounds it can heat up and jam in a bad firefight. That's why we use the MP-5. But you should get familiar with this weapon."