The Sword of Moses (Sneak Preview)

by Dominic Selwood



  The

  Sword of

  Moses

  Dominic Selwood

  THE SWORD OF MOSES

  Dominic Selwood

  Published by

  CORAX

  This is an excerpt.

  The full book will be published in Great Britain in 2013 by

  CORAX

  London

  Visit our authors’ blog

  www.dominicselwood.com/blog

  Copyright © Dominic Selwood 2013

  The right of Dominic Selwood to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. By viewing this document, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this book on-screen. This book is copyright material and no part of this publication may be reproduced, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, photocopied, recorded or stored in or transferred into any information storage and/or retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known of hereafter invented, without the prior express written permission of Corax, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book will be available

  from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-0-9926332-2-6

  (Sneak Preview)

  Typeset by CORAZ and Odyssey Books

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  ‘The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name’

  Exodus 15:3

  (From a short passage widely believed to be

  the oldest in the Bible)

  DAY ONE

  July 2013

  Chapter 1

  Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion

  Aksum

  Tigray Region

  The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

  They came before dawn, from the East, out of the Danakil desert.

  The two white air-conditioned Land Cruisers sped through old Aksum, ancient city of warrior emperors, now a forgotten curiosity—a relic.

  Only a few hundred miles to the east lay the vast Afar Depression—the Horn of Africa’s arid and scorching cradle of humanity. But the town of Aksum itself was fertile and lush, rich with grass and spreading trees.

  As first light began to bleed over the horizon, they raced past Queen Sheba’s grandiose bathing pool—its once petal-strewn waters now murky and stagnant, long neglected.

  Then on to the eerie Field of Stones, with its monumental rows of obelisks stretching higher into the skies than the tallest in Egypt.

  And finally to their destination, the sacred historical church complex of Our Lady Mary of Zion—the holiest place in all Ethiopia, coronation site of the Neguse Negast, the King of Kings.

  He had given them good directions.

  In the leather passenger seat of the lead Land Cruiser, Aristide Kimbaba pulled a black balaclava over his face and flicked the safety catch on his 7.62 millimetre AK-47 into the semi-automatic position. He fingered the cold steel weapon appreciatively. It was an authentic Russian model, not a cheap Far-Eastern copy. It even had a military-grade Russian POSP telescopic sight mounted onto it.

  He had given Kimbaba and his men good equipment.

  The militiaman smiled to himself. He had come a long way for this. He knew it was a good plan from the moment he had been told of it.

  There was no one about in the hot sleepy town. The narrow dusty streets around the church complex were deserted.

  Kimbaba looked at the plastic-sleeved map resting on his knee.

  “Stop here,” he ordered the driver in a low growl, directing him to pull up outside an ornate building nestled in a glade of trees between a large modern church to the north and a small ancient one to the south. Its alternating green and rose-tinted stone was barely visible in the morning glow.

  If Kimbaba had cared about such things, he would have noted that the multicoloured building was numerologically perfect—a square, with one door and three windows per wall. One, three, four, and twelve—all sacred numbers. But these subtleties were lost on him. His untutored eye noticed only its discreet onion dome and slim metal cross hinting at a religious purpose.

  The militiaman stepped briskly out of the vehicle.

  At six foot three inches tall, he was an intimidating figure—his inherent physical menace heightened by an unbuttoned camouflaged jacket revealing a well-muscled torso, olive trousers tucked into black para boots, and a khaki canvas waistcoat bulging with spare magazine clips.

  Striding swiftly up to the iron fence surrounding the chapel, he looked at it keenly, assessing the thickness of its bars and the depth of the concrete into which they were set.

  Roused by the noise of the Land Cruisers’ engines at this early hour, the chapel’s groggy guardian monk appeared at its age-worn oak doors.

  His tired yellow robes and green pillbox hat were the only splashes of colour in the grey morning half-light.

  Catching sight of the militiaman’s gun and balaclavad head, the guardian stopped dead at the top of the steps, paralyzed.

  Kimbaba had heard the church doors open, and reacted instantly. Raising his gun, he tucked its heavy stock into the padding over his right shoulder and looked directly down its sights at the frozen monk.

  “Ouvrez la grille!” he growled, advancing quickly to the gate. His Congolese French was heavily accented. “Ouvrez.”

  The elderly monk looked blank.

  Kimbaba stopped at the gate. He tried the handle, but was met with decades of rust welding it tightly shut. He was not surprised. He knew only one guardian monk lived inside the compound, and the gate was only opened when he died and a successor replaced him.

  Kimbaba was less than ten yards from the stunned guardian. He pointed the gun directly at him, switching to English. “Open it!” His voice was menacing.

  The elderly monk continued to stare blankly at the armed man shouting at him.

  Kimbaba turned to Simplice Masolo, his wiry deputy who had moved in swiftly behind him, also training his gun on the elderly figure.

  “Get the C-4,” Kimbaba grunted.

  Masolo strode back to the Land Cruiser and took two lumps of off-white explosive from a steel box on the back seat. He had gutted a pair of Claymore anti-personnel mines for exactly this purpose, and quickly moulded two charges onto the fence—one just above ground level, the other at shoulder height. Attaching long wires, he ran them back to a small handheld metal detonator.

  Masolo motioned all the balaclavad men to take cover behind a nearby crumbling stone wall. When they were out of blast range, he pressed the detonator’s worn button.

  The charges exploded with a deep staccato boom, sending twisted shards of metal hurtling through the air at a lethal speed.

  As the smoke cleared, Kimbaba strode through the jagged gap in the fence where moments earlier the gate had hung. He walked straight up to the guardian monk, who was still standing on the steps, miraculously unhurt.

  Without pausing, Kimbaba smashed the butt of his buff tape-covered rifle straight into the guardian’s surprised face, tearing the corner of his mouth, felling him instantly with the force of the blow.

  Satisfied, he stood astride the prone monk and looked at the blood seeping from his mouth
onto the dusty ground. Bending down, he rolled the guardian onto his front, grabbed his arms, and tied his wrists roughly behind his back with a quick-action plasticuff.

  The whole manoeuvre was swift and violent. It had taken less than ten seconds.

  Without pausing, he dragged the guardian to his feet, jamming the cold muzzle of his gun into his prisoner’s left kidney, and pushed him up the smooth steps towards the open wooden doors of the chapel.

  The stunned guardian made no attempt to resist. He stumbled forward, dazed.

  Four of Kimbaba’s men followed quickly at his heels. The other two stayed by the twisted gap in the fence, rifles at face height, scanning the approach through their sights.

  As the heavily armed men entered the darkened building, they fanned out to avoid presenting a solid target. But they need not have worried.

  It was empty.

  They were alone.

  The windows were draped in thick dusky curtains to exclude all natural light, and there was no sign of any electricity.

  As Kimbaba’s eyes adapted to the gloom, he could see the chapel’s roughly plastered stone walls were covered in ancient embroidered hangings of saints and religious scenes. There was a crudely carved reddish-brown eucalyptus altar at the far end of the room, and a dirty mattress with a crumpled blanket in a corner where the monk slept.

  Otherwise, the room was empty.

  The thing they had come for was not there.

  Kimbaba turned to the monk. “Is this a joke?” His voice was deep—the Congolese accent unmistakable.

  The guardian stared blankly back at him, unfocused, blood still dripping from his mouth.

  The militiaman took a step further towards him. “I’m