Rivka’s eyes glinted in the moonlight as she scanned the bluff around him. Then she began climbing.
Insanity! What could she be thinking of? Damien looked at his watch. Paul could come along anytime in the next hour or so. Impossible to predict.
One thing was sure. Damien couldn’t afford to have Rivka standing around when Paul and the cavalry came riding around the corner.
Damien cocked the hammer on his gun. Some would sneer at this plain vanilla Colt .45 revolver, six bullets, hand loaded. He rather liked it. Simple. Clean. Reliable. He studied the barrel for a moment. Unfortunately, he had not been able to find a silencer on the black market to fit his backup gun.
This would make a lot of noise, so the quicker he got it over with, the better. If Paul and the Romans came around that bend right now, a gunshot might give them a good scare. They wouldn’t recognize the sound, but still, it would be better that they not hear it at all.
By now, Rivka had climbed a dozen feet and showed no signs of stopping. Close enough. Time for your reward, my dear.
Damien calmly raised his gun.
Suddenly, Rivka stumbled.
An instant later, Damien fired.
Chapter 37
Ari
A GUNSHOT!
ARI’S HEAD JERKED around to the right, his heart leaping with fear. The shot sounded close, but not too close. Perhaps a couple of hundred meters away.
His mind began spinning wildly. Damien must have brought a second gun. He must have shot at Rivka. Why did he not shoot again? He must have hit her. Why did Rivka not scream? She must be…
Panic blinded him for a moment. He clenched his fists. Possibly, she was unconscious. She could not be dead. She could not be dead.
She could not be dead.
Ari raised himself to a low crouch and began slinking through the brushy country above the road. He saw no sense going back down there. Damien would have the high ground, would be watching the road from this level.
But he would not be watching behind him. He would never hear Ari creeping up, would only feel strong hands close around his throat. Whatever feelings of reconciliation Ari had felt for Damien a few days ago, they were gone now.
Damien had hurt Rivka. Probably seriously injured her. For that, he would pay.
A sharp, burning pain knifed through Ari’s chest. Rivka had been right. Damien was here. Oh, HaShem, why did I let her out of my sight? HaShem, please let her scream so that I can know she is alive. Please, HaShem. Let her be alive.
* * *
Rivka
A dozen feet up the slope, Rivka’s ankle had begun sending warning signals. But she had no time for pain. She ordered her body to keep moving.
God, help me. God, give me the victory. God, work your will in this somehow, someway. When I am weak, then you are strong. You must be awfully strong, Lord, because right now I’m feeling awfully weak. Do your stuff, Lord.
She stepped up again, reached a narrow ledge of rock. She looked down. She had climbed high enough that falling would really hurt, though it wouldn’t kill her. A waist-high rock now confronted her. The climb looked easier to her right. She took a small step in that direction. Ouch!
Pain shot through her ankle.
She collapsed in agony.
As she fell, something brushed against the hair over her left ear. An instant later, she heard a gunshot, then the ricochet of a bullet off rock down below.
He’s got a gun!
Rivka lay on the narrow rock ledge in a panic, afraid to make a noise. Where had Dr. West got another gun? He must have brought it with him. He was just the sort to have a backup to a backup to a backup. Why hadn’t she thought of that?
For a moment, she lay very still. The rock she had been trying to climb shielded her from Dr. West’s view. And shielded him from hers. What was he up to?
She pricked up her ears, listening for the faintest sound.
Then she heard it. The sound of rock against rock. The sound of a man climbing down a steep slope. Very, very carefully.
Rivka looked around. She lay on a ledge of rock about three feet wide and a couple of body lengths long. On one side, a wall of rock rose straight up. On the other, she faced a drop of a dozen feet down to a rocky floor. If she rolled over the edge, she would completely disable herself. Plus, she would be even more exposed than she was now.
Rivka closed her eyes. There was no back and no forward, no left, no right, no up, no down. Ari was too far away to be any help.
There was only God and Dr. West. And the one with the gun seemed a lot more real.
Rivka’s head pounded with fury. She had blown it, and she had nobody to blame but herself. God had given her this game to win or lose, and she had lost it. Damien was going to win, all because she was an idiot. She hadn’t thought that he might have a second gun, and now she was going to pay.
Well, not if she could help it. She had gotten herself into this mess, and she would get herself out. She wouldn’t go gently into that dark night.
Rivka crawled along the ledge until she found what she needed. A few small shards of rock. Not much, but enough for God’s First Tiger!
Okay, God, I’ll show you what I’m made of. You sent me here to do the impossible, and I’ll get it done. I won’t give up.
Unlike David.
Oops! That was a mistake, to think of her stepfather at a time like this. Rivka felt her eyes misting. What kind of a First Tiger was she, anyway, crying when the game was on the line?
* * *
Damien
Damien stared in fury and disbelief. He had had to rush his shot when she stumbled. How had she known to fall down just in time? If God existed—and he didn’t, but if he did—that was just the sort of stunt you would expect him to pull.
Damien listened for a moment. Anybody nearby ought to be raising a ruckus right now.
Silence.
So Rivka had come alone. Good.
Obviously, Rivka hadn’t fallen far, or she would be screaming her head off. So she must be hunkered down behind that big rock where she would have an excellent view of the road. She could still screw up his plan unless he did something quickly. When Paul got here with his bodyguard, all she would have to do would be to start screaming. That would alert the Romans, and they would come investigate. And Rivka spoke Latin.
She would screw things up, and Paul would get away again, and then he would have to go to his last backup: the kill zone in Caesarea. He didn’t want to do that. He wanted Paul dead tonight.
Damien saw an easy way to solve this problem, but he had to do it quickly.
He popped open the cylinder, tapped out the cartridge he had fired, and replaced it with another bullet. Very good—a full deck again. He jammed the gun in his shoulder harness and began climbing down the hill. He had to go carefully. These rocks were loose, and he didn’t want to break his neck in some sort of an avalanche. His right arm throbbed painfully.
Ignore the pain. Take your time and do the job right. That way you won’t have to wait for another chance.
* * *
Damien
The commander had sent a runner ahead with a key to unlock the gates. When the men of Rome arrived at the northwest gate of the city, it stood open. They marched out without stopping.
The short man at the center of the column swayed on his horse. A close observer would have seen that his eyes were shut, his lips moving.
Paul was praying.
* * *
Rivka
At the end, when the cancer had spread through his whole body, Rivka’s stepfather David had given up. He had told the family to stop praying, to quit begging God for a miracle, because there wasn’t going to be one. He wanted to go home.
That had irritated Rivka but good. What had happened to David’s fight? His will to live? His courage?
His answer only infuriated her. “It takes more courage to do nothing for God than to fight like a tiger. Someday, Rivka, God is going to call you to do nothing.”
Gutless. That’s what she had called him.
He had just smiled through the pain and asked her, “Who’s in charge, Rivka? You or the Big Guy?”
Rivka heard the crunch of shoes on loose rock. Dr. West was coming for her. For her, God’s avatar, the one he had picked to save the world. So far, she had done just fine. She had stopped Dr. West twice. This was the third time that should have been the charm. And all she had was a handful of stone shards.
Why had God done this to her?
Or had he? She had stopped Dr. West twice this week. Both times, she had heard God’s voice pushing her on, telling her to stop Damien, providing the opportunities. But had she been listening this morning?
Not really. She had just figured out what needed doing and gone off and done it.
Had God been in it? She couldn’t remember. She had kind of assumed that he would help out when she needed it, as he had all week. He would be there to get it done after she had done her best.
He would be her avatar.
Who’s in charge, Rivka?
Rivka buried her face in her sleeve. The truth was that she was in charge tonight. She was the player, moving the joystick, telling God when to jump, and how far, and how high. She wanted to fight. Wanted to call the shots. Wanted to win.
God wouldn’t let Dr. West screw up the whole history of the church just because she had an ego. Would he?
She didn’t know. But she wasn’t going to move another finger without asking God first.
She flung her little handful of stones over the side. They clattered noisily on the rocks below.
Okay, Big Guy, you win. You’re in charge; I’m not. I won’t even remind you that I’ve got a very nasty bad guy coming at me with a gun. You tell me what to do, or not to do, and I’ll do it. Or I’ll do nothing.
Rivka calmed her heart and waited for that quiet voice within her soul that sometimes spoke when she allowed it.
She expected a reply she wouldn’t like.
But she didn’t expect it to be absurd.
Chapter 38
Ari
ARI SQUINTED IN THE MOONLIGHT. Where was Damien?
His nose caught the scent of a cigar. He crouched lower and hurried forward. His fingers itched to wring Damien’s neck.
On a rock near the edge of the bluff, he found a half-smoked cigar, snuffed out but still pungent.
Ari dropped to his knees and crawled to the brink. A dozen yards down the steep slope, Damien hunched behind a large stone. Tonight he wore Western clothing, and he looked oddly out of place, like a cowboy in a kung-fu movie. A gun harness looped over his left shoulder.
Damien’s right arm hung limply at his side. His left hand gripped the stone in front of him while he slowly raised his head to peer over it.
Where was Rivka? She had to be down there somewhere. Ari had heard nothing since the gunshot a few minutes earlier. Oh, God of our fathers, let her be only unconscious and not dead.
What to do about Damien? He had a gun and Ari had none.
It would be easy to start a rock slide here—the place seemed made for it. But Ari feared to take any action at all. A rock slide would have two disadvantages. Rivka was down there somewhere, so a rock slide might bury her, too. But worse, Damien would probably be killed, and Ari did not want him to die quickly. Death was too good for that lunatic.
Keeping his eyes on Damien, Ari felt for a stone. His hand finally found one—smooth and hard and roughly the size of a baseball. The rock felt quite a bit heavier than a baseball, though. The physics would be favorable—for maximum energy transfer, you wanted a projectile of about the same mass as your own arm.
Some premonition warned Ari to look toward the city. He saw at once what Damien could not. From this angle, the gate of Jerusalem was clearly visible. That explained why Damien had chosen this spot.
On the road, midway between the gate of the city and the bend in the road, a long ribbon of Roman soldiers stretched out. In a few minutes, they would be on the road directly below him.
In his mind’s eye, Ari saw a long train of his Jewish brothers and sisters, two thousand years of innocent souls, persecuted, tortured, and slaughtered by Christians.
Christians enflamed in their anti-Judaic attitudes by that man Paul. Tears of rage formed in Ari’s eyes, and suddenly he found that he could not breathe, could not see well enough to throw his stone. He brushed madly at his eyes.
Could Damien kill Paul? Could he prevent the madness?
And where was Rivka? If Ari waited, would she be caught in the middle of a battle between Damien and the Romans?
At that moment, Ari noticed that Damien seemed to see something. He saw Damien freeze for a moment.
Ari held his breath. Was Rivka dead or alive? Oh, God of our fathers, protect her!
* * *
Rivka
Rivka had just made her decision when she heard a scraping sound. Her heart hammered in her chest. Fear tore her hands away from her face and forced her eyes open.
A couple of yards away, just beyond the large rock, Dr. West slowly stood up. A grin covered his face.
Rivka swallowed hard. She had no retreat, no weapon, no defense. Either she would obey that still, small voice now, or she would never have a chance. It didn’t make sense. It was a foolish gesture, and yet she felt compelled.
She drew in her breath and shouted the stupidest words she had ever uttered.
“Dr. West! I love you! God loves you!”
Damien’s face froze. A moment of indecision clouded his eyes. Then a slow smile crossed his face.
Rivka immediately saw that she had lost. No, God had lost. The words hadn’t worked.
Dr. West awkwardly reached with his left hand and pulled out a gun strapped to his left shoulder. “Sorry.” He cocked the gun one-handed. “Lovey-dovey stuff doesn’t work on me.”
Terror shot through Rivka. She had failed. She was an idiot to believe she had heard from God. She looked up the barrel of the gun. With every ounce of willpower at her disposal, she did nothing.
* * *
Ari
Ari heard Rivka’s beautiful voice, so pure and light and full of faith. So alive!
Damien drew his gun.
Ari threw his stone.
It smacked Damien in the left temple. His arm jerked. The gun discharged. Then he toppled over the edge and vanished.
Rivka screamed. Not a scream of pain, but of fear.
Damien landed heavily somewhere down below, swearing.
“Rivka!” Ari shouted. “Are you hurt?”
“Ari, is that you? I’m fine, but do something! Dr. West is just a few meters below me!”
“Hang on!” Ari shouted. “The Romans will be here in a couple of minutes. Can you see the road? They’re rounding the bend right now!”
“There’s a lip of rock here. I can see over it if I raise my head.”
“No! Keep down.” Ari dropped to the ground himself. Injured or not, Damien might still take a potshot at him from below.
The Roman force crested a small rise in the road, finally coming into full view.
“Here they come!” said Ari. Blessed be HaShem.
A harsh laugh at ground level stabbed the night silence.
Ari peered over the edge.
Damien West darted across the road to take cover behind a huge boulder.
Chapter 39
Damien
DAMIEN CROUCHED BEHIND THE BOULDER and loaded another bullet into his gun. His years of training in martial arts had paid off. He had fallen twice his height onto a rough surface and landed well. Tomorrow, his knees would let him know they didn’t appreciate him, but never mind that. He had a job to finish. Ari had been fool enough to warn him of the Romans coming.
Damien studied the road. He gauged the distance to the soldiers at two hundred yards. Perfect. He had a plan that could still give him victory.
A strange sense of calm settled over Damien. Be here now. Forget Ari and Rivka. They had no weapons, and they huddl
ed in fear too far away to present him with any opposition. To get closer, they would have to cross the road. He could shoot them dead before they got near him. Ari couldn’t throw anything from his vantage point without standing up, but then he would be clearly visible in the moonlight.
So that left Damien against a few hundred ignorant soldiers. He had made a plan for this very eventuality. Not even a fair fight.
The Romans only seemed to have overwhelming numerical superiority. But did they? No. They had four hundred men, but they could march only five abreast on this narrow road. His initial battle would not be with four hundred, but with five.
Those five were key. Destroy them with extravagant force, and confusion would mount. The Romans would stop, try to regroup.
Then he would attack again, and the confusion would turn to terror. The soldiers would not understand the horrors they saw—the heads of fellow warriors exploding.
They would think some supernatural force had invaded the planet. And wasn’t that essentially the case? Some sci-fi writer once said that any sufficiently advanced civilization was indistinguishable from the gods. Damien had a couple of thousand years of advances to draw on. His gun would be the magic wand that flung terror into their hearts.
They would flee, with the fastest escaping first, the slowest last.
Who would be the slowest? Obviously, the oldest. Which meant Paul. He had to be in his fifties or sixties by now. He could not keep up with the fit, young Romans, and he could not outrun Damien.
The whole thing would take five minutes. It all depended on being able to reload quickly. If he still had his semiautomatic, that would have been much easier. No matter. Damien had been reloading guns all his life, and he could do it quickly enough for the job at hand.
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