Rice began with thanks to the Israeli Government and the Muslim Authority for the honor of speaking from a place sacred to three of the world's great religions. He spoke of the history and the conflict that had always surrounded the Mount and the city of Jerusalem.
A few minutes into the speech Selena said, "What's Nick doing?"
On screen, Nick took his phone from his pocket and placed it against his ear. His body tensed. He stepped over to a tall agent standing a few feet away and said something to him.
Later, when people went over the many tapes of the explosion, no one could quite agree on the exact sequence of events. It depended on the viewer's perspective and religion. But all agreed that things began when the man in the gray suit answered his cell phone in front of an estimated two hundred and fifty million viewers watching around the globe.
CHAPTER THIRTY
"Calloway, there's a bomb."
Agent Calloway didn't ask where, or how. He moved fast, yelling into his microphone. He leapt onto the stage as agents began to converge on the President. Rice stopped mid sentence, his eyes narrowing as he took in the sudden flurry of frantic activity around him. Behind him, the Prime Minister rose from his chair, a look of confusion on his face. Ascher's personal bodyguard moved toward him.
Carter stood rooted to the spot, not sure what to do next. Two agents grabbed Rice by the arms, lifted him up off his feet and ran with him toward the end of the stage.
Rice and the Secret Service had reached the edge when the ground shook and rumbled. A geyser of yellow earth and rock and black smoke erupted with an ear-shattering roar and shot into the morning air. The stage rose upward, hurling chairs, people and debris in every direction. Nick was thrown backward into the group of guests sitting before the platform.
The seven-arched porch on the al-Aqsa mosque swayed and fell in on itself in a crazed jumble of moving stone. The walls of the Mosque rippled in kaleidoscopic motion like falling dominoes, collapsing backward from the façade to the dome, sinking into a gaping maw opening in the ground. Two of the ancient minarets leaned sideways and fell. Huge blocks of stone caromed off the Mount and down into the packed crowds.
In the Stables of Solomon, excavations for the el-Marwani Mosque had weakened the southeastern corner of the Mount. The explosion blew through the shoring erected to stabilize the area and the corner collapsed in an avalanche of dirt and stone. Tons of earth and rock cascaded onto the streets and buildings at the foot of the Mount.
The rumbling died away. A third minaret toppled in a grinding mass of stone. The huge stones tumbled together like giant dice, down onto the helpless, screaming crowd below.
Carter stumbled to his feet. Thick clouds of dust hung over the square. A broad, deep pit had opened over Solomon's Stables. The President, Calloway and the others were somewhere in that pit. Nick ran to the edge and peered over.
Rice lay half buried in dirt thirty feet down. One of his agents lay next to him, head twisted in an unnatural position. Calloway was nowhere in sight. Someone's arm extended from under a mound of rock. The edge of the Mount had disappeared and the fabled Stables were now open to the sky. Dirt and stone sloped down like a ramp to the President. Nick jumped into the pit and slid down, feet first.
He placed his hand on the President's neck and felt a strong pulse. There was a long gash on Rice's forehead. Rice's eyes fluttered. Nick began pulling rocks and dirt away from him, all the time looking around. Where were the others? Why was he the only one here with Rice?
He pulled the President free. Rice was coming to.
"Mr. President. Are you all right? Can you hear me?"
Rice opened his eyes. Suddenly they cleared.
"Carter. What happened?"
"A bomb. We'll get you out of here, sir."
Up above, on what was left of the surface, there were shouts and screams, cries, confusion, the beat of helicopter blades coming close. Someone pointed a camera over the edge of the pit. Another figure appeared. It was one of the Muslim honor guards. His beret was gone, his uniform torn and streaked with dust. His eyes were wild. Tears ran down his face. He had a gun in his hand. He was screaming.
"Allah hu Akbar! Allah hu Akbar!"
The last time Carter had heard that cry was in Afghanistan, right before his unit was almost overrun by two hundred Taliban. He'd never wanted to hear it again.
The man started shooting at them, sending chips of rock flying. Carter threw his body over Rice, drew his pistol and fired. The first two rounds took the shooter in the abdomen. He tumbled over the edge. Nick kept firing as he rolled down the slope. More faces appeared at the rim, this time, Israeli soldiers.
In a few minutes they were surrounded by a cordon of soldiers and enough firepower to hold off an average army. The soldiers got them out of the pit.
The square in front of the Mosque was strewn with fragments of stone, the remains of the stage and broken chairs. Dead and injured lay scattered across the bloody carpets. The surface of the Temple Mount had collapsed all the way to the southeastern corner, fallen away into the open chambers of the Stables and the streets below.
The al-Aqsa Mosque was in ruins.
The roof was gone. The walls were broken down all the way back to the dome. The dome was reduced to a gray, shapeless mass on a heap of rubble and stone. One of the minarets still stood, but not for much longer. A thick cloud of yellow-white dust drifted lazily up from the ruins and across the Mount.
The sound of the crowds below spiraled up in a swelling chorus of grief and rage, the cry of a great, wounded beast. Carter thought of Yeats' poem of the Second Coming. His twelfth grade English teacher had forced him memorize it. He'd never forgotten.
This was Jerusalem, not Bethlehem. But it was close enough.
An Israeli military helicopter settled hard onto the Mount. Soldiers fanned out around Nick and the President, weapons ready. Nick supported Rice under his arm. He was limping. They were hustled on board in a storm of dust and debris kicked up by the spinning blades. Calloway was nowhere in sight. Angry soldiers took up posts at the doors of the chopper.
Rice turned to the hard faced captain sitting next to him. He shouted to be heard above the sound of the big rotors as the chopper lifted away toward Mount Scopus and Hadassah Hospital.
"The Prime Minister?"
The soldier shook his head. "Dead."
"The others, the Secretary of State?"
The soldier shook his head. No one said anything the rest of the way in.
At Hadassah, a delegation of worried doctors waited on the helipad. Rice turned to Nick before he was whisked into the hospital.
"Carter. I want you with me when I fly out of here today. We're going back to Washington. Someone has started a war and I'm going to have to try and stop it. Get Harker. Get her on this. Tell her to find out who's behind it. This isn't a Muslim attack. Al-Qaeda and the others wouldn't go after me at the Mount or blow up al-Aqsa."
"Yes, sir."
Rice turned to the Israeli Captain. "Captain I want this man protected like you would protect me. Coordinate our return to Air Force One immediately with your superiors. I can't say it's been a pleasure meeting you, but thank you. You must come visit me in America when this has passed."
It was typical of Rice. Someone had tried to kill him and he was taking time to acknowledge a soldier who had just been doing his duty.