The Brotherhood Conspiracy (59 page)

Twisting painfully further to his right, the driver looked into the back seat.

Bohannon’s eyes were wide open . . . staring . . . in shock.

“Listen, sir, we’ve got to get the sergeant out of the vehicle.”

Bohannon didn’t move. Didn’t look like he was about to move. The right side of his forehead was already shading from scarlet to deep purple, surrounding a golf-ball-size lump. His right arm hung limp from his shoulder—but it was like that from the Citadel

“Sir,” the driver said, pumping urgency into his voice. “Sir . . . you’ve got to help me get the sergeant out of the vehicle. I can’t do it by myself. And I can’t treat his wound in here. If we don’t get him outside now, he’s going to bleed out and die. Sir! Do you hear me?”

Bohannon blinked.

Thank, God.

“Let’s go . . . grab hold of the sergeant’s shoulder and help me pull him out this side. C’mon . . . pull!”

5:32 a.m., Tel Aviv

“Send in the helicopters. Blow them to hell,” said Prime Minister Baruk.

“We can’t do that, sir.” General Orhlon was on the other end of the telephone. “They’re too close. The Muslims and our men are fighting right on top of each other.”

Baruk stood in the living room of his private residence. This night, he didn’t smell the brackishness of the sea or the sweet fragrance of the flowers outside the terrace. He smelled fear. His fear.

“What about the reinforcements?”

“Mr. Prime Minister, the reinforcements are on foot. They’re on their way, but our men who were stationed around the base of the Mount are also under attack. It appears Muslim fighters are pouring out of houses in the entire quarter. Looks like Hezbollah and the Martyrs’ Brigade, Elie.”

Baruk knew what that meant . . . hardened fighters had infiltrated Jerusalem. This was a battle, not a skirmish.

“The Tent?”

“Still up, still protected,” said Orhlon, “but I don’t know for how long. Abner Katz is dead. Levin is in command, but I’ve been told he’s gravely wounded. Captain Theodore would be the next in command, but no one has found him yet.”

“All right . . . I’m coming in,” said Baruk. “I’m going to the helipad now . . . be there in twenty minutes. And Moishe, find a way to protect that Tent.”

Baruk cradled the telephone and was on his way to the door when his private cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He looked . . . it was Whitestone.

“Yes, Mr. President?”

“This doesn’t look good, Elie. There’s a helluva fight going on up there. We should call it off.”

Baruk’s bodyguards were anxious, shuffling around, looking out the window. And they were within listening distance. Baruk would have no privacy now until he was safely installed in Central Command. “I’m afraid not, Mr. President. We must push forward with all our resources. The command has already been given, the action has already been launched.”

There was a pause on the other end. Whitestone was measuring his words. This call was not secure.

“You’ve got a battle raging in the center of Jerusalem,” said the president, his voice revealing the depth of his concern. “Isn’t that trouble enough?”

“It’s our trouble, Jonathan. You know we always take care of our own trouble. We’ll deal with it.”

5:33 a.m., On the Ashkelon Road

It was cold. He didn’t expect the cold. He looked up. Stars were out. But it was cold. He didn’t expect the cold. He looked down. The stones on the ground were moving in circles. He looked to his right. A soldier was kneeling over the sergeant; bloody, seeping bandages pressed against the sergeant’s neck.
The sergeant must be cold. He didn’t expect it to be cold. He looked around. Everything seemed to be moving, but in slow motion. Must be the cold. Off to his left was a moldering, crimson horizon. Something happened there. What happened there—in the cold?

His mind cleared. Annie was out there . . . there was an explosion . . .
she’s out there.
Then it fogged over once more.

Bohannon thought he was running. That was the message he was sending to his legs. But, really, his movement was more like a stumbling rumble. A well-intentioned lurching that covered almost as much ground side-to-side as it did forward. But he kept moving, his eyes on the glow, and the smoke, ignoring the cold.

5:34 a.m., Jerusalem

The pole at his back and a soldier by his side held Levin in a sitting position at the corner of the Tent of Meeting. Over the cacophony of gunfire surrounding him, Levin detected the sound of additional gunfire in the distance. The reinforcements, fighting their own battle. They would be too late.

He looked down at the hole in his right side, where his ribcage used to be. Too late. His men, what was left of them, were falling back, converging around the Tent. But there was no cover, no place to hide on the newly completed platform. And his men continued to die around him as the Muslim fighters kept coming, more of them, over the edge and out of the hole in the concrete.

“How did you get there?” Sam Reynolds was so distraught that he sounded as if he was going to jump across the ocean. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

Rodriguez moved the wristwatch away from his face . . . another of Sam’s gadgets . . . as the gun battle raged in front of him. It looked like the Israeli soldiers were falling back—forced toward the center of the platform by an ever-growing force of Muslim fighters. Rodriguez pressed the button on the side of the watch that activated the satellite phone.

“Yeah . . . I know what’s going on here,” said Rodriguez. “The Israeli soldiers are getting hammered—Muslim soldiers have fought right through the Israeli positions and they are butchering every Jew on the Mount—soldiers, priests,
rabbis, doesn’t matter. They are pressing in on the Tent. They’re going to get it, Sam. They’re going to get it. And . . . there’s a group skirting the fighting. They’re dragging a large sack—a huge sack—dragging it with them toward the Tent. This is not good.”

“Joe . . . listen to me,” said Reynolds, a demanding urgency in his voice. “What I’ve got to tell you is not good, either.”

Levin held an automatic pistol in his left hand, but didn’t have the strength to raise it. All he could do was sit and watch the carnage raging around him.

He saw a group of Muslims, ten men, dragging some strange cargo across the face of the platform, an immense burlap bag. They seemed oblivious to the warfare around them.

Bullets ripped through the hides hanging to his right, splitting open the enclosure wall around the inner sanctuary. The soldier next to him fell at his feet. Levin looked up as the Muslim fighters cleared a path through the few remaining Israeli soldiers. More fighters now joined the men pulling the burlap bag. They lifted it off the concrete. Levin believed he saw it move, but his attention was pulled away. There was no more shooting. A tall, fierce-looking Arab ran over to Levin and kicked the gun out of his hand. Levin thought he heard a squeal as the men passed him with the burlap bag and hurried to carry it inside the Tent.

“We have a sacrifice for your altar, Jew. Something to celebrate the completion of your new tabernacle.” The Arab waved to some of his men. “Turn him around so he can watch the sacrifice . . . quickly.”

Levin could hear the whomp of the helicopter blades coming close and knew the gunships would soon open fire when it was clear all of his men were dead. But above the noise of the oncoming choppers, Levin heard the squeal, louder, more frantic. Through the Tent’s shattered side, Levin could see the entry curtains to the Most Holy Place were thrown aside. The burlap bag was cut open, lying atop the altar.

Trussed up, straining against its heavy rope bindings, a huge sow sprawled across the top of the altar and hung over each side. Several of the Muslim fighters pulled out knives. Some gutted the pig . . . some cut its main arteries. Blood and
intestines and entrails defiled the golden altar and spread across the floor of the Most Holy Place, desecrating the sanctuary. One of the soldiers emptied an animal skin full of fluid over the pig’s body and another threw a flame into it. Pig, altar, and the coverings of the Most Holy Place were ignited instantly and the fire raced along the ancient, hanging hides on both sides of the Tent of Meeting.

The Muslim leader moved in front of Levin, who was being held at the shoulders by two of his fighters. “Watch your blasphemy burn, Jew. There will never be a temple on the most holy Haram.” The leader hitched his thumb toward the growing conflagration. The two fighters grabbed Levin’s belt and shoulders and threw him into the raging flames.

Ali Hassan waved the fighters of his Martyrs’ Brigade and those of Hezbollah toward the edges of the Temple Mount platform. Hassan and his aide ducked behind a sandbag wall, their backs to the burning Tent. “This victory will not last long.” Hassan pointed toward the west. “Israeli gunships kept their distance while the battle was close, but now they will come.”

Torn between his fears for Kallie and Annie, his grief over Doc’s death, and the slaughter he was witnessing, Rodriguez’s mind was numb as Reynolds finished his demoralizing report. He gazed blankly across the platform, seeing but not registering the chaos. He didn’t know what to do next.

“They set the Tent on fire,” Joe said, his voice as lifeless as the sprawled bodies littering the platform. “They hauled something into the Tent and then they set it on fire. Looks like all the Israeli soldiers are dead. I can hear the helicopters coming in now . . .”

“Stay where you are!” Reynolds demanded. “Those gunships see any movement and they may not wait to check your ID.”