by John Lyman
Feigning disinterest, Alon waved overhead. The man waved back before lighting a cigarette. Always a good sign, Alon thought. A man preparing to shoot at you usually didn’t stop to light a cigarette.
Below decks, people held their breath as the barge passed under the carved gargoyle-like figures that lined the sides of the low bridge. Maybe the men on the bridge were just local villagers guarding their town from thugs who had fled the cities and were now ravaging the countryside, or maybe they were the thugs doing the ravaging—who knew? Whoever they were, they didn’t appear the least interested in the barge as it continued down the river.
Soon, the sun began to dip and twilight enveloped the boat as it flowed with the current on its way to the sea. Down below, Leo circulated among families who seemed to be taking everything in stride. These are strong people, Leo thought, stopping to chat with a young man with hands stained red from working in the vineyard and his wife, who was holding an infant.
Nearby, he saw John and Ariella, propped up next to each other on one of the sofas, sleeping. Across from them, sitting on tall, chair-backed stools that lined the front of the granite counter, Mendoza and Evita were focused on their laptops. Both had become fascinated with the code in the Bible and were busy searching for hidden phrases that might help them in the days ahead.
Javier had just taken a sip of coffee when he almost choked. Holding his hand over his mouth, he fought back the urge to spew coffee all over his computer screen.
“You ok, Javier?” Evita asked without looking up.
“Uh ... not really. Take a look at this.”
Evita leaned over and peered at his screen.
Those who serve Him will become the hunted.
Evita tensed as she turned around and scanned the room full of people behind her. In a corner, she spotted Lev playing pool with a group of men. Sliding off the tall stool, she made her way through the crowded space and sidled up next to him.
“We need to talk.”
“What’s up?”
Evita led him to the counter and pointed to the screen on Javier’s laptop. “Take a look at this.”
Lev’s expression remained neutral. “This could mean a lot of things.”
“Don’t you see it as a warning?”
“Not necessarily, but it could be.”
“Shouldn’t we at least take some extra precautions?”
“Against what?” Lev’s expression turned sympathetic. “We’re all in the same boat ...excuse the pun, but there’s absolutely no collaborating event or timetable to use as a gauge against this phrase. It’s pretty vague.”
Evita leaned back and ran her hands through her shiny black hair. “Should we tell Leo?”
“I think he needs a break from all the intrigue. This would only give him one more thing to worry about.”
Evita took a deep breath and closed her laptop. “You’re the boss, Professor.”
Lev was just beginning to say something else when the vibration of a low-flying helicopter rattled the glass as it flew directly overhead, its loud turbines drowning out all conversation.
Everyone froze as Leo and Lev pushed their way past groups of people and climbed up into the darkened pilothouse.
Moshe, along with Alon and Nava, were already scanning the starlit sky with night vision goggles. Apparently, the helicopter had disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared.
“How much farther to the coast?” Lev asked.
“About five miles,” Moshe replied. “I just got off the horn with Alex. He’ll have the speedboats waiting for us when we arrive on the beach.”
Lev made some quick mental calculations. “Even though it’s pushing things a little, each speedboat can hold up to eighteen people. With two boats, we can transfer everyone out to the yacht in two trips. Have Alex bring her in as close to shore as he can.”
“He said they made a trial run earlier to get their timing down. He’s keeping the yacht out in deep water until we get there, then he’ll make a run toward the beach and anchor a couple of hundred yards offshore before he launches the boats. Any closer and they’ll be scraping bottom.”
“Sounds good. What about lookouts?”
“Alex left a crewmember in the dunes with a radio.”
“Good man. Did anyone get a look at that helicopter that just flew overhead?”
“It was past us before we even had a chance to look up. No running lights ... just a black hole in the sky.”
“Ok. Keep your eyes peeled.”
Leo opened the pilothouse door.
“Where do you think you’re going, Cardinal?”
“I need some fresh air. I thought I’d go out on deck.”
“I’d rather you didn’t. I’d like to keep the decks as free of people as possible right now.”
“Whatever you say. I guess I’ll go back downstairs and check on the families again.” Leo brushed past Lev and made his way below.
“You’re keeping the cardinal on a pretty tight leash,” Moshe said.
“I know. I’m starting to see snipers behind every bush, but that man’s important. I have a feeling that he’s going to be even more important someday ... and not just to us.”
The radio in the pilot house suddenly came alive. “Alon ... Moshe ... come in. This is the Carmela.”
Moshe reached out and grabbed the handset. “Go ahead, Alex.”
“Did something just fly over you guys a little while ago?”
The men in the pilot house exchanged glances. “Yes ... a chopper.”
“Our radar just picked it up. It’s circling around ... it’s headed back toward you.”
CHAPTER 39
Alon grabbed the throttles and shoved them all the way forward. “Any sign of the chopper?”
“We’ll probably hear it first,” Moshe said. “If it’s flying at tree-top level, we won’t be able to see it until it’s right on top of us. Tell Alex to stay on the radio and keep giving us position reports.” Moshe pounded his fist on the console. “Damn! I wish we had a stronger radar unit on this boat!”
“What’s going on?”
The men in the darkened pilot house looked down to see Leo staring up at them from the lighted stairwell below.
“The chopper that just passed overhead is headed back this way.”
“Hostile?”
“No way to tell. If it’s one of the same helicopters that attacked the castle, then we have to take it out before it fires on us. A single hit from one of their rockets would kill everyone below.”
The scenario had a Cold War ring to it. Paranoia could cause one side to feel justified in launching a pre-emptive strike against the other.
“What if it’s not hostile?”
“We’ll just have to see how it behaves. If it looks like it’s positioning to fire on us, we’ll have to blow it out of the sky. We can’t afford to let them fire first.”
Moshe grabbed the radio headset and called the Carmela. “Alex ... where is that chopper now?”
A brief pause.
“He’s hovering right behind you!”
“Grab the Stinger!” Lev shouted.
Alon pulled back an oily canvas tarp to reveal a three-foot-long, olive-colored tube with a gun-like trigger and optical sight attached. Known to soldiers as an FIM-92 Stinger surface-to-air missile, the portable air defense system used infrared technology to home in on its target.
Racing up on the back deck, he held the weapon to his shoulder and placed the looming shape of the helicopter in the crosshairs as he waited for the tone that signaled the weapon’s infrared sighting mechanism had locked in on the target. Within seconds, he had tone and was squeezing down on the trigger. A split second later he released his grip and stood back.
“What are you doing?” Lev shouted.
“Look.”
Above and behind them, the chopper had drifted sideways in an attempt to match the slow speed of the barge, giving Alon a clear view of the lighted French tri-color painted on the chopper’s dark bl
ue tail. It was a French police helicopter.
The chopper suddenly backed away before making a violent turn over the trees along the bank.
“I believe they just caught a glimpse of the Stinger,” Lev said.
“They’re probably on the radio with the military as we speak, which means that anyone monitoring their communications will also hear about a well-armed barge headed down the river toward the coast. It won’t take Acerbi’s people long to figure out we’re on this boat.”
“Run her up on the bank.”
“What?”
Lev pointed to a slight bend in the river ahead. “Run the bow up on the bank. We’re only a few miles from the coast now. We should be able to make it overland to the beach from there. Aim for that spot under those trees leaning out over the water. That should give us some cover.”
“I’ll let the families know we’re going ashore,” Leo shouted from the stairwell.
“Start getting them all up on deck!” Lev shouted. “I don’t want anyone below the waterline if we punch a hole in the hull when we hit.”
Within minutes of the command to run the barge aground, everyone below had been herded up on deck. They were all bracing for a collision when the huge barge slid gently up against the bank and came to an anticlimactic stop in the soft mud.
Alon leapt down into the shallow water at the stern of the barge and waded ashore. With Stinger in hand, he settled in under a clump of trees and began to scan the skies for any new threats. Moving quickly, the men on deck began helping people off the bow onto the bank, and as soon as the last person was safely on shore, the entire group took off through the countryside. Moving almost at a run, they were trying to put as much distance between themselves and the barge as possible, for everyone knew that it was now a target.
With Alon covering their retreat from the river, John and Ariella followed along behind the main group with Dr. Diaz. A lifelong battle with asthma was forcing the overweight scientist to stop along the way to catch his breath as his body was wracked with fits of wheezing.
“Are you ok to go on, Dr. Diaz?” Ariella asked. “Do you have some medicine or something with you?”
“Yes ... in my bag.” He dropped to one knee while Ariella dug through his bag and found a red plastic inhaler. Reaching out, Diaz grabbed it and shoved it in his mouth. In quick succession, he inhaled two metered puffs, and within seconds, his wheezing seemed to lessen as the color returned to his face.
“I’ll be alright now. Thank you, but we need to get going. The people chasing us will stop at nothing until we are all dead.”
John and Ariella exchanged glances.
“You know who they are?” John asked.
“I’m certain they are Acerbi’s people.”
“You know him?”
“Let’s just say we’ve crossed paths in the past. Come on you two, let’s go.”
Diaz rose to his feet and stumbled forward as a puzzled John and Ariella followed behind. They had all assumed that Acerbi was somehow behind the attack on the castle, but Diaz seemed sure of it.
Leo and Lev needed to know about this as soon as possible ... especially if Diaz had been withholding information he should have shared with them sooner.
Unlike the hilly terrain that surrounded the castle, the land they were now passing through was flat. In the bright moonlight, their silhouettes where highlighted as they moved silently through musty-scented olive groves on their way to the coast. By now, they could smell the sea, and the humidity of the offshore breeze bathed them in its welcoming embrace as they crept past darkened gated villas. The very act of walking, of being in motion on foot, seemed to re-energize the group in their struggle against an unknown enemy that seemed intent on their destruction for some reason.
Passing thorough one of the ever-present vineyards, their moving figures blended in among the twisted and gnarled grapevines, until finally, Moshe pointed out the rising shapes of sand dunes glowing under the moonlight in the distance. The group continued along a trail that led between two tall dunes, finally emerging onto a wide sandy beach that bordered the area where the Aude River emptied into the Mediterranean Sea. There, to their relief, they spotted two of the Carmela’s speedboats bobbing in the luminescent surf surrounded by crewmembers dressed in black.
A figure in the dunes stood up and called out to the group. “Is that you, Professor?”
“Yes,” Lev shouted back.
The figure slid down the side of the dune and jogged up to Lev. It was the crew member Alex had posted in the dunes as a lookout.
“Where’s the Carmela?”
“She’s blacked out, sir. We anchored her just beyond the third sand bar. The captain had us make a few practice runs in the boats. Our transit time from the beach to the yacht is down to five minutes, and that includes pushing the boats off the beach.”
“Good. We need to start loading right away. We think the people who attacked the castle know we’re out here somewhere ... and they have helicopters.”
The crewman flashed his light three times, and soon a human chain stretched from the boats to the water’s edge. In all, a total of over thirty men, women, and children began wading through the waist-high surf to the waiting boats for the first run out to the yacht. When the two boats were full, the drivers shoved the throttles all the way forward, and soon, the roar from their engines faded, replaced instead with the rhythmic sound of the rolling surf.
The families with children had been the first to depart for the yacht, leaving all the members of the Bible Code Team, along with several men and women from the compound, temporarily stranded on the beach. Grouped together, they huddled between the dunes to prevent their outlines from casting moving shadows against the stark white sand in the bright moonlight.
In the hyper-alert state of waiting, each new sound made them jump. Was that the thump-thump of a helicopter in the distance? Was that the sound of an animal stepping on a twig, or was it the click of a round being chambered in a weapon pointed directly at them from behind the next sand dune?
The questions pummeled their thoughts, like the obsessive-compulsive checklists of the mind that torture those who fear they’ve forgotten something after they’ve left home. Did I close the garage door? Did I turn off the oven? The list of potential threats was endless.
Suddenly, like ghosts in the night, the Carmela’s white speedboats reappeared over the crests of the waves and inched their way toward the misty shore. Looking back over their shoulders, the group in the dunes bolted for the water. Without waiting for the boats to slide up onto the sand, the evacuees thrust themselves into the surf and pushed the slim speedboats around before climbing onboard. Within seconds, they were charging back out to sea, leaving resident sea birds and crabs in their wake, the sole inhabitants of a beach that appeared deserted.
* *
It was good to be home, for that was what the Carmela had become to the Bible Code Team—a place of refuge away from a world seemingly gone mad. Hadar immediately set to work in the yacht’s galley preparing food for everyone, while Ariella and Nava began organizing the crew to assist the families in finding places where they could sleep. Every inch of the yacht’s interior space had been given over to sleeping bags and makeshift beds, and soon they were all settling down with bowls of quickly prepared seafood stew as the Carmela disappeared into a thick fog that had suddenly settled over the Mediterranean along the French coast.
Up in the yacht’s communications center, Lev was talking to some of the crewmembers manning their stations. They were all marveling at the sudden appearance of the fog—a fog that had not been in the forecast. It was as if God had finally embraced them in his arms, protecting them from the airborne assault they had all feared was eminent.
Seated at one of the communications consoles, Lev had changed into his traditional khaki shorts and white shirt that he wore open at the top, revealing a tanned chest full of curled white hair. Leaning back in his chair, he let his feet slip in and out of his flip-fl
ops as he scanned the various lighted screens around the room. Satisfied that there were no other boats in the vicinity, he turned to the yacht’s first mate. “What’s our fuel situation?”
“Alex had us make a few runs to shore in the speedboats so we could fill up some empty fuel drums with diesel fuel. It took us awhile because we had to go to several different marinas in the middle of the night, but we finally topped off our tanks early yesterday morning.”
“I love that Greek. He’s one of the most resourceful men I’ve ever known. He’s just made it possible for us to go home.”
Lev picked up a phone and punched in a number. A few buzzes later he had Daniel on the line.
“Professor ... I can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear from you. We’ve been sick with worry here at the villa.”
“We’re all fine. What have you been able to learn about this man Acerbi and his organization?”
“You better hang on to your hat, Professor. I’ve got a lot to tell you.”
CHAPTER 40
Ensconced in their self-contained world at sea, the land based dangers they had all been facing for the past twenty-four hours seemed far away to Leo as he sat drinking coffee on the bridge. Looking through the expansive windows, he was watching the sun come up over an empty ocean. He loved it out here. The sea was solitude, which he cherished, but there was also the exhilaration of movement across a medium that allowed anyone with a seaworthy vessel to go anywhere in the world. It was a hard thing to explain to those who had never ventured away from the land.
Over the past year, he had been able to take quick little breaks from his duties at the Vatican to spend some time ocean fishing with friends. He loved looking down into the clear blue water, where he could see the darting white flash of a fish at the end of a taut line, its unique movement telling him what kind of fish it was.
