The Lost Codex (OPSIG Team Black Series Book 3)

by Alan Jacobson

  DeSantos’s face flashed through her thoughts as he leaned forward and looked her in the eye. “I need to know if you can handle yourself.”

  I’ve stormed buildings, jumped out of helicopters, and parachuted from the back of a military jet. I can do this too.

  Vail shoved the phone in her pocket and brought a fist up to knock.

  This man is a killer. Kill or be killed. Kill or be killed.

  She rapped lightly on the wood surface. The door immediately swung open and a large male stood there, angular face with close-cropped dark hair and wearing a uniform with the unmistakable green/yellow/black logo of al Humat.

  A submachine gun was balanced against his right forearm. His hand relaxed and the barrel dipped slightly when he saw a woman standing at the door. Not much of a threat.

  Vail did not hesitate: she spoke the words Uzi coached her to say in Arabic—“I have an urgent message for Kadir from Doka”—and handed him a note. When he reached out to take it she stepped forward and thrust her long Tanto blade into his midsection, an uppercut designed to miss the ribcage. It sliced through as if she had cut into Jell-O. She yanked the handle left and right, severing the abdominal aorta.

  The fighter’s eyes bulged wide and his torso bent forward in shock. Or pain. He dropped the AK-47 as his head jerked back. He grabbed her throat with a broad, thick hand and squeezed with surprising strength.

  Don’t panic, Karen. He’s bleeding out.

  Kill or be killed.

  She gave the Tanto a final jerk back and forth and then grabbed it with both hands and yanked it up and down, sawing in and out.

  Three long seconds later the man’s eyelids fluttered closed and he collapsed into her, releasing his hold on her neck. She stepped aside and helped him down to the shiny granite entryway.

  Vail used her left Timberland boot to roll him over. She stuck her foot on his abdomen and extracted the Tanto, then gave it a quick wipe on his pants—her black 5.11s were now smeared maroon with blood.

  She moved to her right into an expansive living room whose walls featured a large representation of the al Aqsa mosque in relief, alongside the Dome of the Rock, which was covered with what looked like real gold leaf—just like the actual building. She knelt behind a needlepoint upholstered chair to consult the drone’s infrared imagery. Four men were down, which meant that Uzi, DeSantos, and Fahad were also successful. That still left an unspecified number of security personnel—two outside the room and maybe three guards and two tangos inside the room.

  Vail slipped the Tanto back into its sheath and removed her Glock. A round was chambered, so it was ready to go. At this point stealth was no longer an option—nor was it necessary. All the men were on the same floor: the basement.

  Judging by her team’s movement—they were all closing in on the room—she was the last to dispose of her assigned target. But she resisted the urge to move too quickly. Although she had only seventy-five seconds until the guard’s scheduled check-in, the last thing they needed was for any of them to be discovered now, before they were all in position.

  A minute later, with time winding down, she had descended two floors and stood on the landing, a few feet from the mouth of a long hallway. Approximately thirty feet down the cement corridor was another al Humat officer. He was likely keeping watch at the door to the large room behind him, where an important business transaction was occurring.

  Vail leaned her back against the wall and waited for the text from DeSantos. It came seconds later:

  count to ten then go

  She shoved the satphone in her front pocket and took a breath, hands wrapped around the Glock’s polymer handle. Seven, six, five, four …

  72

  Uzi and DeSantos faced the second door to the basement bunker, where Sahmoud and Rudenko were likely located. They were ninety degrees from the main entrance, where Vail’s target was stationed.

  “I like your new uniform,” DeSantos said of Uzi’s al Humat black shirt with embroidered patches depicting the organization’s logo.

  “He wasn’t all that bad for a terrorist. He gave me the shirt off his back.”

  This was by design—Uzi would engage the guard with his hands rather than his knife—in case they needed an intact uniform.

  They had thirty seconds before the scheduled check-in with the security booth officer was due—assuming they kept to their schedule. According to the logbook Uzi had seen, they were punctual.

  Fahad remained upstairs, ensuring guards did not enter the house once the shooting began. That they were in the basement, two levels down, lessened the likelihood the gunfire would be heard.

  DeSantos tried the knob carefully, slowly, quietly, and determined it was locked. The door appeared to be solid metal—which meant it was heavy, likely reinforced, and impervious to being kicked in.

  If this had been another time and place, Uzi would’ve set a charge of C4, taken cover, and blown it off its hinges.

  They had reviewed the file photos of each wanted man. They would have milliseconds to identify them and shoot the others. How many were there? Impossible to be sure.

  One mistake and they would lose the ability to detain and question two of the most dangerous criminals in the civilized world. However, Knox had made the overriding objective clear.

  “We can’t shoot through this,” DeSantos whispered.

  “Agreed. We should knock.”

  DeSantos gave Uzi a look.

  “I’m serious. Sometimes the simplest solutions are right in front of you.”

  “I’ve got nothing better. Go for it.” DeSantos texted Vail and then moved out of sight.

  Uzi lifted his balled fist toward the door and rapped on the cold steel surface.

  “What,” someone shouted in Arabic from the other side.

  “Message from Doka,” Uzi replied. “Important.”

  The countless hours Uzi had spent in Shin Bet’s academy, then Mossad’s training facilities during ops preparation, and in the FBI Academy’s shooting house, flashed through his thoughts. His heart was pounding and his pulse was racing. He took a breath. The knob turned and the door swung in a second before Vail’s first gunshot rang out.

  Uzi shouldered the door open. DeSantos swiveled into the room, took aim, and drilled a number of suited men in the chest.

  Yelling

  Chairs toppling

  Frantic bursts of return gunfire

  Uzi located his target and squeezed off several rounds, the sound deafening, the smell of cordite suffocating, obscuring visibility.

  “Where is he?” Uzi yelled. “Where’s Sahmoud?”

  Another two gunshots, then Vail burst in, crouched low with her Glock in the ready position.

  Uzi moved deeper into the room and surveyed the carnage. Neither Sahmoud nor Rudenko was there. He pulled an AK-47 off the dead body of one of the downed security guards and tossed it to DeSantos.

  He rooted out his satphone and saw an amorphous, unaccounted for heat mass behind the large desk near the far wall. Uzi hand signaled Vail as he moved cautiously toward the man.

  A middle-aged male with a salt-and-pepper beard was seated on the floor, his back against a vertical row of wood file drawers. His right hand was pressed against his abdomen.

  Assessing the threat and determining there was none, Uzi shoved the Glock in his waistband and knelt in front of the man.

  “Kadir Abu Sahmoud, you’re a prisoner of the United States government.”

  73

  Vail came around the edge of the desk and studied Sahmoud. He was leaking blood from an abdominal wound and was in a great deal of pain. Given their covert status, there was no way to get him the kind of medical attention he needed to save his life. How long he had she did not know. Because of their training, Uzi or DeSantos could make a more accurate assessment.

  “Get me to a hospital
and I will make sure you are well compensated,” Sahmoud said through clenched teeth.

  “Call Mo,” Uzi said. “Tell him we’ve got Sahmoud but not Rudenko.”

  “Copy that,” DeSantos said as he removed his phone.

  “The dumbwaiter,” Sahmoud said. “He’s … gone.”

  Vail moved across the room and examined the small elevator. She craned her neck and looked up the shaft and saw that the car was on a level maybe twenty feet above her. Is Sahmoud telling the truth or is Rudenko hiding somewhere? As Vail turned to face the room, a group text arrived from Fahad:

  infrared shows man moving away from

  back of house on foot. cant pursue

  Rudenko! Son of a bitch.

  She glanced at DeSantos and shook her head. She replied and told Fahad to make sure there were no surveillance cameras—and if there were, to erase any recordings.

  While DeSantos patted down the dead guards, Vail turned her attention to the primary objective and began a systematic search of the room. She did not have far to look: a walk-in safe behind the desk, a few feet from Uzi, was ajar. She pulled the six-foot-tall metal door open enough for her to enter and turned on her phone’s flashlight.

  On the left side were a number of flat cases and assorted cardboard rolls, stacks of money of various denominations—shekels, dollars, pounds, euros. A large velvet pouch of uncut diamonds. Several canvases of what looked like Renaissance era paintings.

  As she sifted through the contents of the shelves, she heard Uzi and DeSantos begin to interrogate Sahmoud.

  Off to the right she saw a portfolio that was strikingly similar to the leather cases she had seen in the Louvre restoration vault. She set it on a small table in the center of the vault and carefully unzipped it.

  Whoa. So this is the Aleppo Codex.

  It was as the rabbis in Brooklyn had described: once bound, now mostly loose pages of about 10x13, dark brown ink on tan parchment, roughly thirty lines to a column, three columns to a page. The handwriting was so perfect it could have been typeset on a computer.

  Her palms were sweaty, her heart still racing—but it was not just the residual adrenaline. She was holding one of the most important documents produced by mankind. It brought back memories of her first trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a young art history major and seeing Diego Velazquez’s oil on canvas, Juan Pareja.

  The scroll?

  Vail closed the portfolio and pulled off the metal endcap of a spiral wound cardboard shipping tube. She peered inside: another parchment, this one looking a good deal more fragile. She did not want to risk pulling it out for fear of damaging it. Vail opened three others—and while each contained what appeared to be valuable documents, none matched the description of a Dead Sea Scroll.

  “How’s he doing?” Vail asked, poking her head out of the vault.

  “Not very cooperative,” Uzi said. “He confirmed that Rudenko sold him the scroll. Rudenko bought it twenty-some-odd years ago from someone who smuggled it out of the Vatican.”

  “So the Vatican got its hands on it?” Vail asked.

  “They offered nineteen million dollars to get it back. Sahmoud made a better offer. No one knew who had it. He felt now was the time to sell because of what he’d been told about the peace negotiations.”

  “He was right,” DeSantos said. He was standing beside the kneeling Uzi, the pilfered AK-47 in his grasp, legs spread. A position of readiness.

  Vail whispered in DeSantos’s ear, “With the gunshots, even down here, there’s gotta be others on their way. And someone may discover the dead guard at the gate. Don’t know about you, but I don’t want any part of that.”

  “Especially with Fahad watching the shop. What about the codex and the scr—”

  “Got both.”

  DeSantos nudged Uzi in the shoulder. “Boychick, we gotta go.”

  “Take me with you,” Sahmoud said through a tight jaw. “I’ll pay you … Two million each.”

  Uzi laughed.

  Sahmoud winced. “Diamonds in the vault … worth twenty-five million. Take them … they’re yours.”

  “They’re ours anyway,” DeSantos said. He lifted his phone and took a snapshot of their prisoner’s face. “We should leave him here.”

  Sahmoud began to laugh—a rough chuckle that had a raspy edge to it.

  “What’s so funny?” Uzi asked.

  “The man who made all this possible. One of your own.” Laugh. Wince.

  “What are you talking about? Who made what possible?”

  Sahmoud’s head fell back against the wood desk. “He … helped us locate the bank. He … made it possible … to buy the scroll.” His eyes closed.

  C’mon asshole, don’t die on us now.

  Uzi and Vail shared a concerned look—but he started talking again.

  “His idea to use it … to leverage … the Israelis. Knew they’d give in … Not many weaknesses … but their holy books … their holy land … can’t help themselves.” He laughed again, brought his knees up to his chest. “He found out … FBI director coming … to make sure … I was sent to … America … for trial. Warned me.”

  Uzi got in his face. “Who? Who warned you?”

  He opened one eye. “Take me …”

  Uzi hesitated, then said, “Fine. We’ll take you with us.” He turned to DeSantos and said, as convincingly as possible, “Get something to use as a stretcher.” Back to Sahmoud: “Who warned you?”

  He swallowed, licked his lips. “Ward … Connerly.”

  74

  The president’s chief of staff?” Uzi glanced at DeSantos, the look saying, “So it wasn’t Mo.”

  “That’s why you planted the burned body,” Vail said.

  Sahmoud managed a crooked grin, his eyes closed, his voice weak. “You weren’t … smart enough … to get the … clue.”

  “Clue?” DeSantos asked.

  The note pinned to the Times Square vic. The first ward. Ward Connerly. “First” applies to the president, like the First Lady, the first dog. The president’s chief of staff.

  She explained it to Uzi and DeSantos.

  “Nothing … you can do …” Sahmoud said. “Never … find … evidence …” His voice tailed off, his arms went limp, and his head dropped to his chest.

  DeSantos pressed two fingers against Sahmoud’s neck, then straightened up. “Looks like he’s reached his end of days.”

  “WHAT ARE WE GOING TO do about this?” Vail asked.

  “Nothing,” DeSantos said, feeling for hidden compartments in the desk. “Our job’s done. We’ll give it to Knox, let him run with it. Right now we grab what we can, get the hell out of here.”

  “Sahmoud could’ve been telling the truth,” Vail said. “Guys like Ward Connerly know how to cover their tracks, they use straw men to do the dirty work. If there’s nothing out there linking him to this—”

  Uzi walked into the vault and started rummaging around. “There’s more than one way to build a case. It may take a while, but we’ll get him.” He pulled out his phone, put it on speaker, and set it on the table.

  “Rodman.”

  “Hot Rod, it’s Uzi. Sorry to wake you.”

  “Wake me? Been at the ops center pulling double shifts. What do you need?”

  “Ward Connerly. Get what you can on him.”

  “The president’s chief of staff?”

  Uzi explained what Sahmoud had told them. “Any connections to Middle Eastern types that look suspicious, dig deep. Speed matters.”

  “We’ll get a team on it right now. Hodges,” he shouted away from the phone, “get your ass over here.” Back into the handset, he said, “If there’s something to find, we’ll find it.”

  “We’ll be on the move. Anything comes up, tell Knox and Hoshi Koh at my office.”

  “Got something,” DeSantos
said. He handed it to Vail, who brought it to Uzi.

  “Hang on a sec,” he said to Rodman. Uzi studied the two-page printout for a moment, then said, “Looks like a list of al Humat cells in the US, with contact numbers for what could be the leader of each one. Hot Rod, I’ll send it over to you. You’ll need an Arabic translator.”

  “We’re on it. Check six.”

  Uzi hung up, then took a photo of the spreadsheet and emailed it to Rodman.

  “If that’s what you think it is,” DeSantos said, “that’s a huge win.”

  Uzi opened a cabinet in the vault and rifled through its contents. “We’ll see. No idea how up-to-date it is—assuming I’m right.” His back to DeSantos, he said, “But I don’t share your optimism about bringing Connerly to justice.”

  “I think we should be happy with our score and call it a damn fine job.”

  Vail checked her watch, then pulled open another desk drawer. “Assholes getting away with a crime doesn’t sit well with me. Especially when those assholes are in positions of power.” She found a booklet made of clear plastic sleeves containing maps. Although she could not read the Arabic, it had GPS coordinates and was marked up meticulously with bold blue and red lines crisscrossing the pages.

  Vail walked back into the vault and showed it to Uzi. “What is this?”

  He flipped through the pages and paused to read the Arabic. “A diagram of their tunnels. Red for the ones that go into Israel. Blue for the ones coming from Egypt into Gaza. That’s gold. Take it with us, we’ll turn it over to the IDF.”

  As Vail shoved the booklet into the back of her waistband, she noticed that Uzi was slowly unrolling a parchment.

  He stooped over the document as he read the Hebrew. “This is it.”

  “The Jesus Scroll?”

  Uzi brought his gaze up to hers. She saw wonderment in his eyes, nothing short of amazement.