Furthermore, when he came here, he never actually came to the cave. He only came into the ravine and stood looking up at it.
Perhaps he’d forgotten the way to the top?
Safia couldn’t help herself. She walked over to the lower mouth of the cave and peered over into the ravine.
And there, many feet below her, stood the Hajj. Looking up. Directly at her.
She nearly screamed.
She fell back into the cave, pressing herself against the wall.
Then she looked straight ahead, and she did scream.
January 27, 2007, 12:17 p.m.
(1 hour, 47 minutes since end of auction)
Judean wilderness west of the Dead Sea
Israel
* * *
One of the men from the wedding was standing behind her.
He must have followed her here. He was very tall, well muscled, and imposing. She had led him here.
Now what? Now everything was ruined.
Certainly he would take the box.
Was he the person who had kidnapped Yasmin?
Safia clutched the box to her chest, and stared at him, wild-eyed.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I’m here to help.”
Then the last thing Safia ever would have expected happened.
The woman Jaime came down the rope behind him.
Safia had liked Jaime. She had trusted her. Was it Jaime who had followed her and had brought the other? She now recognized the man as Jaime’s brother, Ahmet, who had come to help Jaime in the other cave.
Why were they here?
“Safia,” said Jaime. “Don’t be frightened. We want to help get Yasmin back. We really are here to help.”
Safia started to cry. “I never meant for any of this to happen!”
“I believe you,” said Jaime, coming over to her. She put a hand on Safia’s shoulder.
“You won’t tell?” the girl asked. “You won’t tell anyone about the cave? Or that I took the box?”
Jaime was about to answer when all three of them became aware of a pulsating noise. At the beginning, it was enough to confuse them, to cause them to stop and pay attention, trying to sort out what it was.
The noise got louder. Quickly. And as it began to reverberate off the walls, the entire cave seemed to shake. Small pieces of rock began to break off.
“What is it?” asked Safia.
“It’s–a helicopter,” answered Jaime. “Safia…are you–are we the only ones here, that you know of?”
Safia thought just a moment and shook her head.
“No, the Hajj came, but he doesn’t know the way up. He’s down there, in the ravine.”
She pointed outside. The man Ahmet walked over, hiding carefully along the wall of the opening, and looked down. He looked back at Jaime and nodded. Then he looked up into the sky.
“I can’t see anything,” he said in English. “It must be coming from a different direction.”
The sound was getting so loud that Safia took her free hand to cover one of her ears. She could see, but not hear, Jaime and Ahmet talking to each other.
And then a terrible thing began to happen.
The roof began to cave in.
January 27, 2007, 12:10 p.m.
(1 hour, 40 minutes since end of auction)
Judean wilderness west of the Dead Sea
Israel
* * *
The S-70A Black Hawk helicopter sped across the barren desert with a crew of three and one passenger. As the crew chief watched for any impediments that might endanger the aircraft, Frank McMillan scanned the horizon with his binoculars for any sign of the Hajj.
McMillan had watched an hour earlier as the Hajj slipped away from the crowd of searchers and headed for the corral. How could he help rescue his bride by riding off into the desert? Unless…he was going to retrieve the box.
But with the sheikh on horseback, there was no way Frank could follow in his Jeep without being seen. Returning to his vehicle, the CIA agent grabbed his satellite phone and made an emergency call back to Tel Aviv. He needed air transport, now.
The CIA had nothing, but in the interest of international cooperation the Israeli Army agreed to support with a Black Hawk and crew. So, forty-five minutes later Frank was airborne and following the tracking device he had planted on the Hajj.
For some minutes now the track had stopped moving on Frank’s handheld device. That must be it. The Hajj must have reached the location where the box was hidden. Checking his map, then peering through his binoculars, Frank found a ravine that seemed to match the correct location.
“Let’s take a closer look down there,” he said into the aircraft’s internal commo system, and pointed toward the ravine. The pilot nodded, banking the aircraft down and to the right.
The sun was straight up, and there were no shadows to impede their vision. All four men were watching closely for any signs of life when the copilot suddenly shouted.
“There,” he cried, and the pilot banked hard back to the left, toward a spot where the little valley seemed to dead-end into a cliff.
McMillan peered through his binoculars. There was something moving–a horse. The horse had a saddle and bridle, so there must be a rider somewhere! As they swung around from a different angle, he saw it. The form of a person, laboriously climbing up the side of the ravine.
“I see him. Land there!”
“I can’t, sir,” responded the pilot. “The ravine is too narrow; a wind gust could take us right into the cliff.”
“Okay, how about that plateau.” As he trained his binoculars on the plateau, he was surprised to see two more horses. “Set down there and I’ll take a look and see if there’s a way to get down into the ravine.”
The Black Hawk banked one more time, heading for the flat plateau above the ravine. The noise of their approach was enough to scare off both horses. Frank didn’t see which way they went. However, the fact that they disappeared implied there would be a way down.
Hovering over the landing zone, the rotors kicked up a whirlwind of dust, and the pilot had trouble sensing when they would touch down. They hit rock before he expected, landing hard. It was not enough to damage the aircraft, but the jolt made the ground shake beneath them.
“Whew!” said the crew chief, shaking his helmet as the rotors slowed. “That was close. Much harder and this bird might have come apart.” He waved to catch the attention of the pilots. “I’m gonna check for damage while he,” throwing a thumb in their passenger’s direction, “looks for his man.”
Frank already had his belt unbuckled and was climbing out the door.
“Chief!” he yelled back as he walked away from the aircraft. “You better be ready for a quick liftoff. This ground doesn’t feel too stable.”
The man waved acknowledgment as he circled his helicopter, checking struts, rotors, any crucial areas closely for sign of damage from the landing. A crack here, a loose nut there, and the chopper could come apart in midair. Satisfied that all looked okay, he climbed back inside to help prep the bird for liftoff.
McMillan walked to the edge of the cliff and looked over. It was straight down. From this angle, he couldn’t see the Hajj making his way up.
Walking back toward the center of the plateau, trying to get his bearings, Frank noticed some rocks piled around a hole in the ground. Was that a rope tied to one of the rocks?
He drew his weapon and crept toward the opening, noting that the rope was taut and swaying as if someone was climbing.
Well, this could certainly be interesting. McMillan waited curiously to see who might emerge.
January 27, 2007, 12:18 p.m.
(1 hour, 48 minutes since end of auction)
Judean wilderness west of the Dead Sea
Israel
* * *
Behind them, rocks were showering down as great chunks of the cave roof began to fall in.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” said Ahmet.
“Hurry!” said
Jaime. “Safia, quickly, up the rope!”
“You’ve got to trust me,” Ahmet said to the girl. “Let me hold the box and help you up the rope. You’ve got to get up and out and run as far in the opposite direction of the helicopter as you can. Give me the box; then once you’re standing on my shoulders, I’ll hand it up to you!”
“No!” said Safia, clasping the jeweled box to her with all her might.
“Safia, you’ve got to get out! We might not all make it! If he says he’ll hand the box up to you, he will. I promise,” Jaime said.
Safia looked at Jaime, and thought she saw truth in her eyes.
“I promise!”
Great slabs of rock were falling now, and Safia knew one could hit and kill any of them at any moment.
She handed the box to the man. Then Jaime cupped her hands together and boosted Safia up to the rope. She pulled herself up, and was bold enough to put one foot, then the other on Ahmet’s shoulders.
Then she reached back down for the box.
Ahmet handed it up to her.
Safia reached through the hole in the roof and put it outside on the ground. Then, with a boost from Ahmet, she pulled herself up the rest of the rope, out into the sunlight.
She gasped with the effort as she threw herself prone onto the ground, purposely landing on top of the box, to protect it.
A hand reached down to help her up.
She looked up and saw another man standing there.
This one was not smiling.
This one had a gun pointed at her head.
January 27, 2007, 12:20 p.m.
(1 hour, 50 minutes since end of auction)
Judean wilderness west of the Dead Sea
Israel
* * *
Things were happening so fast. Jaime was plunged from wonder at the colors and artistic detail of the cave, to confusion at the falling rock, to purpose in getting Safia safely out of the way.
Jaime was also surprised that Yani had actually given Safia the box–the box that was the focus of this whole mission.
But the main goal was to get the box to safety. They still had another Operative back at camp. And once the girl was out, a whole other section of the roof began to cave in.
Yani was still helping Safia the final distance out of the cave when the sandstone roof above the spot where he’d just stood looking down into the ravine began to collapse.
Jaime saw it coming, and grabbed Yani’s hand, pulling him back into the inner recesses of the cave. The thunder of the collapse was almost deafening.
“They landed a helicopter on top of the cave!” Yani was yelling.
“They mustn’t have known it was hollow–didn’t know it was a cave!” Jaime called back.
Jaime closed her eyes and grabbed her burqa and held it over her nose and mouth, trying to filter out enough debris that she could breathe.
The two of them flattened themselves back against a wall until the din subsided.
When it stopped, the air was filled with sand and rock particles. As the dust began to settle, Jaime opened her eyes. She and Yani were in a space maybe eight foot square, with rock all around them.
Yani was already on his hands and knees, trying to find any weakness in the wall now formed by the fallen slabs. He was working his way along on the side toward the cave entrance where they’d recently stood. Jaime took her cue from him, and started on the other end, working back toward him.
Every now and then she would come to a rock or a pile that she could budge just a little. Once, there had been a small opening in the slide, but when she began to clear it out, the rocks above her, which had been supported by the caved-in rubble, became unstable and she had to back off.
After only a few minutes, there came another crash from above.
It hadn’t been caused by the work either she or Yani was doing. But the earthen roof just above where they were working began to shake and crumble.
This time, Yani grabbed her, in the nick of time. He pulled her backward and down.
Jaime’s heart revved as the cave once again began collapsing around them.
With only pinpricks of remaining light, Yani had seen a ledge protruding from the back wall. He shoved Jaime behind him, and pulled her into a crouching position. There was a small niche in the cave, and Jaime’s back roared with searing pain as she was flung against the wall of it. Yani fell back beside her. She’d always thought him the last one on earth to be sexist, but he instinctively held her head down and positioned his body as a shield for hers.
The collapse only took one, maybe two more minutes, but it seemed as if their whole life had been crouched back in the hollow, trying to breathe, waiting for the noise to stop.
Jaime pulled her newly scraped back away from the wall of the cave, and tentatively leaned forward.
It took a full minute for her to notice there was just the tiniest bit of light coming through here and there, in openings only as big as drill bits. It took a while for her eyes to adjust.
Their world was now about six feet long, five feet high, and six feet wide.
Yani moved before she did.
He carefully inched forward and felt the new wall before them. He pushed at it, then worked his way along the entire length of it. Only once did something move–and it was a rock pile from above that rained down on him. He shook it off and continued down the rock wall. There weren’t any large boulders. It was rock and debris. It was packed solid.
Yet Jaime had never known Yani to be defeated.
On the two missions they’d done together before, even when they’d faced likely death, Yani had cheerfully announced that their escape would be “a challenge.”
Jaime waited for his pronouncement, for their plan of action.
Instead, Yani sat back down, leaned his head against the back wall, and said in a voice filled with anguish, “Why are you here?”
January 27, 2007, 12:22 p.m.
(1 hour, 52 minutes since end of auction)
Judean wilderness west of the Dead Sea
Israel
* * *
The last thing Frank McMillan expected to see pop out of the hole was a young Bedouin girl.
And she was carrying, of all things, his box.
Well, this was shaping up to be a very good day. Time to grab the object and be gone. He leveled his pistol at her and waited calmly for her to complete her ascent and turn around.
How gratifying to see the look of shock in her eyes. But give her credit, there was no fear. He would soon fix that. But first, the box.
“Do you speak English?”
She nodded.
“What’s your name?” he asked the young girl in a conversational way that belied the fact that he was pointing a gun at her head.
She stood tall as her thin frame would allow, and tucked the box under her arm. She didn’t speak but looked at the ground.
How annoying were these customs, that wouldn’t allow a female child to talk to him? He proceeded anyway.
“How about we make a deal. You give me the box and I don’t kill you. Sound fair?”
She held the box closer, and shook her head as if she was willing to die rather than give up a piece of wood with a few jewels glued to it. Amazing, such devotion to a piece of old detritus.
Then, scrambling up a path over the back edge of the plateau appeared a teenage male. He was only a couple of inches shorter than Frank, and had deep black hair and a muscular build. Frank was certain he had seen him in the men’s tent during the celebration.
The young man seemed to quickly assess the situation, and said something to the girl in their language as he walked toward her and pointed at Frank. The intent was clear: Give him the box; it’s not worth it.
She was shaking her head, and he continued to approach her, continuing to argue.
Let me help you convince her. McMillan lifted the Beretta and took aim at her head, and loudly flicked off the safety latch.
Now the young man was pleading, and finally th
e girl seemed to relent, handing the box to him.
Very solemnly, the Bedouin youth walked to Frank, holding the jeweled box in outstretched arms as if making an offering to an idol.
“This box has been the source of great good fortune for our people,” he said in English. “I will not have it become, instead, the cause of great sorrow. Take it, but be aware that in the manner of its taking you may discover that what has been a blessing for us might become a curse for you.”
Frank laughed out loud, and then motioned to the pilot to start the engine. The rotors began slowly to turn, then picked up speed.
“Superstitious drivel, kid. You look smarter than that.”
McMillan stepped back onto the skid of the copter and placed the box carefully inside the door before motioning the pilot to take off. Then McMillan turned to face the two Bedouin children. He hooked his left arm through a strap hanging in the open door and brought up his right hand, which was still holding the Beretta.
“Good riddance!” he yelled, and took aim at the girl. Just as he was preparing to squeeze off a round, there was a flash of movement from the boy and a slim silver projectile hurled in McMillan’s direction.
Frank look down to find a knife buried up to the hilt in his midsection. As the helicopter pulled up and away, he let go of the strap and the pistol, grabbed his gut with both hands, and plunged down into the ravine below.
January 27, 2007, 12:32 p.m.
(2 hours, 2 minutes since end of auction)
Judean wilderness west of the Dead Sea
Israel
* * *
The tone of Yani’s voice chilled Jaime to the core.
He was the top Eden Operative in the world.
He had been Sword 23.
Jaime had never heard him betray an uncalculated emotion while on a mission. Ever.
She did her best to slough it off and instead concentrated on his question.
She said, “What do you mean, why am I here? I came following Safia. I thought she had the box–and she did. That was my mission.”
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