“Natasha,” she yelled, but there was no answer.
Erin sprinted into the tunnel another hundred yards and finally found her new friend crumpled against a wall. She set down her Uzi and felt for Natasha’s pulse. It was weak but still there. Natasha was breathing, but blood was everywhere. Erin shouted for Jon; then she leaned down and checked Natasha’s pupils. They were dilated and unresponsive.
“Natasha,” she said gently. “Natasha, it’s me, Erin. Can you hear me? Move your fingers if you can hear me.”
There was no movement. She called for Jon again. He didn’t respond.
“Lord Jesus, please, please have mercy on this girl,” Erin prayed. “I know how much you love her, and I pray that you would have mercy on her, Father. Let her live. Please, let her live. I can’t take any more death. There’s been too much dying, too much pain. Please, Father, spare her. Spare us, too. I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.”
Erin opened her eyes. Natasha’s face was white as a sheet.
“Natasha, I want you to hold on, okay? Can you hear me? I want you to hold on. I’m going to get Jon. I’ll be right back.”
* * *
Bennett heard Erin shouting.
He set down his camera, grabbed his Uzi, and raced to find her, nearly running into her as she reentered the main antechamber. He could see the panic in her eyes and instantly knew what had happened.
“Is she still alive?” he asked.
“Barely,” said Erin. “Two shots. One to the stomach. One to the shoulder. We need to get her out of here now.”
But her words had barely registered when they heard the pump action of a shotgun.
“That may not be possible,” said a man’s voice neither of them recognized.
Bennett looked over Erin’s shoulder in disbelief. Beyond the mountain of gold coins beside them he could see someone in the shadows near the entrance. Someone who was holding a double-barreled shotgun aimed at their heads.
Bennett glanced back at Erin. He knew what she was thinking. But there was no way. He shook his head ever so slightly, just enough so she’d get the idea without drawing the gunman’s fire.
“Set your weapons down slowly, both of you,” said the man. “Then put your hands in the air and turn around.”
“Who are you?” Bennett asked as he and Erin both lowered their Uzis to the floor.
“I am your executioner.”
Bennett didn’t wait for confirmation. He grabbed Erin, threw her to the left, then dove to the right, behind a mountain of gold coins.
The shotgun blast was deafening. Then came another. Both missed narrowly, but coins flew everywhere, forcing the gunman to duck. Erin scrambled for cover in one of the back rooms, then drew her Beretta. Bennett, meanwhile, reversed direction, grabbed one of the Uzis off the floor, and dove into the next room behind Erin.
Another shotgun blast. Another near miss. The man was closer now. Bennett checked the magazine and found it half empty.
* * *
Erin peeked around the corner.
That drew another blast. She waited a beat, then checked again. This time the gunman was coming in fast. She fired off three rounds. Two went wide but the third hit him in the shoulder, spinning him around and slamming him against a wall.
Erin caught Jon’s eye and nodded. He took the cue, pivoted around the corner, and fired off two rapid bursts. The killer wasn’t there, but his blood was splattered everywhere.
Erin took another quick glance. The tunnel was clear. She motioned to Jon to move on the count of three. She held up one finger, then another. On the third they both burst into the open, guns blazing, but the man was still nowhere to be found.
* * *
Bennett was almost out of ammo.
There was more in his backpack, but just as he considered racing to the back chambers to get it, the gunman emerged from the shadows.
“Look out,” Erin yelled, but the man’s gun went off.
Bennett ducked back just in time. Erin wasn’t so lucky. Her scream almost paralyzed him with fear. He looked across the hall and saw the woman he loved holding her leg, blood all over her hands. Then he heard the sound of coins scattering in the main antechamber. The man was on the move, heading for the exit.
Bennett pivoted hard, found his target, and pulled the trigger, unleashing every last round he had. The man dropped to the floor, writhing in pain, screaming at the top of his lungs. Everything in Bennett wanted to attend to his wife, but he dared not let this monster loose. He raced across the room, dove on top of him, and lunged for the killer’s throat.
69
TUESDAY, JANUARY 20 – 8:19 p.m. – THE JERUSALEM TUNNELS
Bennett’s grip tightened around the man’s neck.
“Erin, I’ve got him,” he shouted, but there was no response from the next room, and the man suddenly slammed his knee into Bennett’s groin, sending him reeling.
The assassin scrambled out of the anteroom, heading back into the tunnels. Bennett was in excruciating pain, but with the pain came a torrent of fresh adrenaline. He dragged himself over to Erin as quickly as he could. The buckshot had ripped up her right leg, and she was bleeding profusely. He pulled out his handkerchief, made a tourniquet, and wrapped it tightly around the wound, trying to make her as comfortable as possible. She begged him to go after the injured gunman.
“I’m not leaving you,” he said, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close to his chest.
“No, Jon, he’s getting away. You’ve got to go after him—for Natasha,” she insisted. “For Mordechai.”
Erin’s voice was weak, but she wasn’t kidding. She handed him her Beretta.
“Just be careful,” she added. “You’ve only got two shots left.”
* * *
Viggo Mariano waited for Bennett in the shadows.
He had no weapon, no ropes, no way to climb out of these underground cisterns. Escape wasn’t an option. But murder was. He had the element of surprise, and that might just be enough.
* * *
Bennett couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Erin.
What if he didn’t make it back? Who would even know that she and Natasha were down here, in desperate need of help? But Erin was insistent. How could he let this guy escape after all the evil he’d done? Besides, she reminded him, he’d have to go at some point to get medical help.
He had no choice. He turned on his flashlight and headed out into the tunnels, trying to readjust to the overwhelming darkness. A moment later, as he turned a corner, he came across the body of one of the men they’d killed earlier. He would take no chances. He reached down to check the man’s pulse.
Out of nowhere the assassin struck, smashing Bennett over the head with a rock.
Bennett collapsed to the ground, dropping the gun and the flashlight, both of which went skittering across the floor. His head was bleeding. He was conscious but woozy. It all happened so fast. He was on his hands and knees, frantically searching for Erin’s gun, but the killer found it first. Before he knew what had happened, Bennett was staring down the barrel of Erin’s Beretta.
“Almost, Mr. Bennett,” the man said, short of breath and wiping away the blood trickling from his mouth. “You almost made history.”
“Who are you?”
“Does it matter?”
“Are you Farouk?”
The man laughed. “I am Viggo Mariano. Farouk’s dead. My team killed him in Jordan yesterday.”
“A coup?”
“Hardly,” Mariano sniffed. “Farouk was never the leader.”
“And you were?”
“Let’s just say I was the contractor.”
“So who was the client?”
“You can ask the devil when you see him.” Mariano raised the gun.
Bennett covered his face.
A burst of gunfire exploded through the tunnel.
But it was Mariano, not Bennett, who slumped to the floor.
* * *
Bennett opened his eyes.
>
Mariano lay in a pool of blood. Twenty yards behind him was Dmitri Galishnikov and a squad of Israeli commandos. Bennett was too stunned to speak.
“You guys were taking so long,” Galishnikov said. “I got worried. And when I took another pass over the city, I saw Arik’s and Roni’s bodies lying there, and I knew something had gone wrong. I called Katya. She said to turn you guys in, in exchange for special forces. So I did.”
Bennett’s head pounded. His hands were full of blood. But he was grateful to be alive, and he asked the commandos to go help Erin and Natasha. The medics moved swiftly while the others secured the tunnels and set up portable lights. Galishnikov, meanwhile, helped Bennett to his feet, and together they went to find Erin.
“God bless you, Dmitri.”
“I think He has, my boy. I think He has.”
“You’re not going to believe what we found.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
But suddenly they heard a medic shouting.
“Mr. Bennett, she’s not here.”
Bennett raced inside to the chamber where Erin had been lying. “What are you talking about?” he yelled. “You’ve got to be kidding me. She was here just a minute ago.”
But they were right. Erin was gone. There was blood where she had been lying but no trail leading anywhere else.
The lead medic grabbed his radio. “All units, be advised, there may be another hostile in the tunnels. I repeat, there may be another hostile in the tunnels.” He turned to Bennett and Dmitri and ordered them to stay put until they could figure out what was going on. Then he drew his sidearm and cautiously moved back into the hallway with the others.
But there was no way Bennett was going to stay put. He didn’t work for them. He didn’t have to take their orders. He wanted his wife.
Just then he noticed a few drops of blood on the floor. He grabbed a torch and slowly began making his way to the back of the chamber, past the bowls and the censers and the acacia-wood tables piled up around him. What he hadn’t realized the first time was how far the room went back. In his excitement, he’d snapped his pictures and moved on. But now he saw there was more. And there, in the back of the room, behind one of the tables stacked with treasures, was an archway, leading into another antechamber. It was there he found his wife.
Bennett set down his torch and rushed to Erin’s side. He threw his arms around her, grateful beyond words to have her back. But she didn’t move.
She was alive. She was breathing. But she refused to return his embrace. Instead she just stood there, motionless. And then he realized why. For there, not three feet away, stood the Ark of the Covenant.
Bennett froze, awestruck and trembling. He half expected to be incinerated, along with his wife, just for being in the room with the holy relic. In ancient times, only the high priest could approach the Ark as he atoned for his own sins and the sins of all Israel. Anyone else could die just for looking at the seat of God’s glory or touching it improperly. So Bennett waited for death to come.
But it did not come. Why? How was that possible?
Bennett searched his mind as he had searched the Scriptures since this journey first began, and then it all became clear.
Mordechai had taught them, direct from the words of Jesus and Paul and Peter, that in the sight of God, all of their sins were now atoned for, washed away, gone forever—not because of their own good works but because of their faith in the blood that Christ had spilled from the cross. God no longer saw them as imperfect or impure. To the Judge of the earth, Bennett and Erin were now pardoned.
Now they didn’t need a Temple or a high priest to approach the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
What an honor, thought Bennett. What an amazing privilege, to know Christ and to be able to enter His presence at any moment of any day. Yet what an honor for him and Erin to be here, too. To be the first to see what men and women had longed to see for centuries. He began to weep, first for himself, for his weakness and his foolishness and his lack of faith, and then for so many souls who so desperately needed what Christ had bought them at Calvary. Beside him, Erin wept as well. They did not talk. They did not touch. They just cried, overcome by the presence of the God they loved and who loved them.
It could have been a few minutes or a few hours. Bennett had no idea. But when his tears had stopped and his heart had calmed, his curiosity began to grow and his eyes began to lift.
There it was, just as the Scriptures described, just as Barak and Natasha had described. It was a rectangular chest about five feet long and three feet high, covered in pure gold and resting on four gold feet. It was fitted with gold rings—two on the side facing him and, he assumed, two more on the other side—through which were resting long poles, again one on each side. On top of the chest was the mercy seat, where the blood was sprinkled by the high priest on Yom Kippur for the forgiveness of men’s sins. And hovering over the mercy seat were two gold cherubim—angel-like creatures with large wings covering their faces, spread upward and almost touching.
Bennett wanted to touch it. He wanted to open it, to see if the rod of Aaron was inside, to see if the jar of manna was there too. But even as the thought crossed his mind, Bennett’s body began to shake. Erin’s did as well, he noticed, for she was looking too. It was as if they were on holy ground, and he again felt incredibly unworthy to be here. He felt like he shouldn’t be here, that it was time to leave. He tapped Erin on the shoulder, and the two of them slowly backed out of the room, not looking at the Ark again.
When they were completely out, they closed the door to the antechamber where the Ark rested and sat down to catch their breath.
Bennett turned to Erin and tried to speak, but he couldn’t. He looked around for Dmitri, or one of the soldiers, but for the moment they were alone. He wanted to explain what they had just witnessed. He wanted to shout it from the rooftops. The Temple would be built. The pressure to construct a house to hold the Ark would be an unstoppable force. He had no idea what their own futures held, but he knew for certain the world they had known was once again about to change forever.
70
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21 – 3:47 p.m. – JERUSALEM, ISRAEL
A light rain fell over Jerusalem.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. It was colder than it had been for weeks. Bennett stared out the window of Hadassah Hospital, sipping a hot cup of coffee and turning his BlackBerry on for the first time in days. He counted 114 e-mails and 43 phone messages.
“Anything urgent?” Erin asked.
“Salvador Lucente,” Bennett replied. “Glad to hear we’re okay, but he’s still waiting for an answer.”
“What, to work for him? He’s lost his mind.”
“Erin, he is about to become one of the most powerful men in the world.”
“I’m not impressed,” she said. “Besides, didn’t we both promise each other to go through political detox and make a clean start of our lives?”
“That feels like a million years ago.”
“It was only ten days,” Erin reminded him.
Bennett sighed. “Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I want that life again. Believe me, I don’t.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It’s just that we keep getting pulled back into the game, and it makes me wonder if there’s something specific God wants us to do with whatever time we have left.”
The room grew quiet. Bennett could see in Erin’s eyes how much she detested the idea of getting back into politics, especially with a man like Salvador Lucente. She had never trusted Lucente as much as he had, and maybe she was right. But that wasn’t the real question. The real question was, how much time did they really have left before the Rapture, and how should they spend it?
Just then, the phone in the room started ringing. Bennett picked it up on the second ring.
“Hello?”
“Jon, sweetheart, are you okay?”
He was amazed
by how quickly she’d tracked them down.
“Hey, Mom. I’m fine. I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner.”
“How could you do this to me? I was worried sick. What about Erin? Is she still in surgery? I saw on the news—”
“She’s fine too, Mom,” Bennett assured her. “We’re both good. I’m actually with her right now. She’s eating Jell-O and making faces at me.”
“Someone said she was shot in the back. Is that really true?”
“No, no, in the leg,” he explained, wondering how many other rumors were out there unchecked. “The doctors say they got everything. She’ll be here for a few days, then on crutches or in a wheelchair for a while. But she’ll be fine.”
Ruth Bennett began to cry. “Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus. I can’t tell you how worried I was, Jon. I got a call from Helen—you know, the woman from my Bible study, the one I told you about? Anyway, she told me to turn on the news. And, of course, that’s never a good call. But I did, and every network was covering it. They’d cut into all the regular programming. And when I saw the troops massed around the tunnels and people being airlifted out in helicopters, I just knew you and Erin were right in the middle of it.”
“We were,” he said. “But God’s been very gracious to us.”
“I’m just glad you’re all right, Son,” she said. “I remembered you telling me Hadassah Hospital was where they took Dr. Mordechai when he was shot. It took me a while to convince them that I was really your mother. But then I threatened to have President MacPherson call on my behalf.”
Bennett had to smile. “And that shook things loose, huh?”
“They put me right through.”
“You’re tenacious, Mom.”
“No, that was your father,” she said. “Where do you think you got it from? Not from me. I’m just learning in my old age. Well, look, I know you’ve got a lot going on right now. I’m just glad I had a chance to hear your voice and make sure you’re both okay.”
The Copper Scroll Page 31
