The Solomon Key

by Shawn Hopkins

  “Joshua!” the guy called again. “The ring!”

  He looked up to him. “How do I know you won’t grab us once I tell you?”

  “If I wanted to, I’d have already grabbed you, started cutting her up right in front of you until you told me everything I wanted to know.” He paused. “If I wanted to.”

  It was a very good point. He never thought the conversation would get this far, never thought out an actual location to give them. Wherever he supposedly put it would have to be somewhere behind him, since it was possible the cell phone traced his route for them. But that was the very direction he’d have to flee in. “You understand my hesitation to trust you,” he said.

  “All I want is the ring.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was told to get it.”

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “I’m beginning to think you’re stalling, Josh. And why would you be doing that?”

  He sighed. “Give us a head start.”

  After a glance at his watch, thrusting his hands in his pockets and looking back and forth impatiently, he nodded. “Fine. You’ve got half an hour.”

  Scott took a couple of steps backwards, pulling Jennifer along with him. “I’ll tell you from the other side of the bridge.” Then he turned with her and covered the fifty yards to the west end, leaving the shotgun lying on the tracks. He turned back around to face him, thinking fast.

  “Well?” called the man, his voice echoing back and forth for a few seconds.

  “Follow the tracks for a mile or so west. You’ll see a marker. Go north. You can’t miss it.” His sentence rebounded overtop of itself and continued on down the canyon.

  “Kind of vague, isn’t it?”

  “You can’t miss it.”

  “Fine. But I want you to know that if it’s not there… well, let’s just say we’ve taken precautions. You won’t get far. And when we catch you, we’ll probably be pretty angry at having been lied to.”

  He looked down to Jennifer.

  “I think they put something in me,” she whispered.

  Scott nudged her west and away from the bridge. “Go.”

  “Oh, and Joshua,” the voice boomed after them, “does Jennifer know about Los Angeles? About your role in that false flag operation? Perhaps you can tell her about it on your way.”

  He pushed her along. “Keep going. Don’t look back.” They began jogging over the tracks.

  “Does she know how many innocent lives were extinguished by your hands?”

  The question went back and forth across the ravine, rebounding off its sides and repeating itself over and over again, a knife thrusting into his heart with each echo. His dark secret was now laid bare to the wilderness of Northwest Pennsylvania… and to his wife. But all he could do to escape the accusation was move faster.

  “What kind of shape are you in?” Scott asked.

  She looked over at him, through so much confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “How long do you think you can run for?”

  “As long as you need me to.”

  “Two miles?”

  “I’d run a thousand for you,” she replied.

  He smiled, resisting the urge to pick her up in his arms and kiss her. “We need to move fast. As fast as we can.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “There’s no time to explain. But when they find out I don’t have what they want, they’re going to come after us, so we need to get as far away from here as possible.”

  After seven minutes, they stopped to catch their breath. Scott needed to think of something that would buy them a little more time. Even if the guy kept his word and didn’t come after them for another twenty-three minutes, it’d only take them two or three minutes to reach their location. That was four minutes lost, meaning they really only had a twenty-six minute head start.

  Jennifer dropped her head down between her legs, trying to fill her lungs with the air they were screaming for. The cold air burned going in.

  “I need to make a marker,” Scott mumbled. He started walking off the tracks, toward the woods.

  “Wait,” she gasped. She stopped him by grabbing his arm, spun him so that he was facing her, and then threw her arms up around his neck. She put her lips on his, kissing him with a passion that no words could describe, years worth of feeling and emotion communicated through their embrace. They held on to each other tight, fearing that if they were to let go they might lose each other forever... again.

  A million things were sprinting through Scott’s head, questions he wanted to ask her, things he wanted to say, but the clock wasn’t going to wait for them. Pulling away, he dragged her back toward the woods. “Come on!”

  “Josh.”

  He turned to look at her, and the sight of her, the way she was standing there staring at him… she looked like an angel, the wind carrying her strawberry blonde hair across her face and over one eye. He could have exploded right there, the emotion he felt surging within almost too much for him to handle. He felt as if his whole existence was no match for the love swelling in his heart. “What?”

  “I love you.”

  More water filled his eyes. “I love you.”

  “I never stopped.”

  “Me neither.”

  And then she stepped off the tracks after him.

  “We need to make a marker.”

  And they made a small pile of rocks with a long tree branch sticking out of it. Another two minutes had passed.

  “It needs something more obvious,” Scott said.

  “You can use my jacket,” Jennifer offered.

  He shook his head. “No, I supposedly did this last night.” He quickly unzipped his own jacket, pulled the hooded sweatshirt up over his head, and then took off the white t-shirt. The cold blasted his bare skin and spread goose bumps over his flesh. He noticed Jennifer staring at him, and he smiled. “What’re you looking at?” He tied the shirt around the top of the branch, making a white flag out of it.

  She blushed. “My long lost husband.”

  God, please get us out of this. Grabbing his sweatshirt and jacket, he put them back on as he led her up into the woods and away from the train tracks.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, panting.

  “To see some people about whatever they put in you.”

  “What about the ring they want?”

  “Hopefully they waste a lot of time searching the area around the flag before they decide to come make me show them where it is.” He helped her up a steep slope, figuring they should start heading west. He wanted to reach the commune before the Mossad abandoned it to the coming soldiers, hoping that Malachi’s men could take out what was put in Jennifer.

  Jennifer was growing tired, running out of energy. Her steps were slowing, her breathing more strained.

  “Come on, Jen. You can do it,” Scott urged.

  It was growing lighter out, though the clouds still hadn’t broken. They navigated through the trees, fully aware that their time together could already be running out.

  “How much farther?” Jennifer asked, trying her best to keep up.

  “I don’t know. A few more miles maybe.”

  She groaned with despair. “I won’t make it.” She tripped and fell.

  Scott went back, helped her to her feet.

  “I can’t breathe.”

  “Come on, we have to make it.” He wrapped his arm around her waist and helped her along.

  Tears welled up in her eyes, and she started to cry. “I’m going to lose you again.”

  He shook his head. “No you’re not. I’m not going anywhere. You hear me?”

  “But I can’t make it.”

  She was right. By now the NSA guy would already be on the tracks looking for their marker, and soon they’d be right behind them, tracking whatever was in her. Scott didn’t know how many of them there were, but he was pretty sure the guys he’d seen in camouflage were Special Forces. He wouldn’t stand a chance against the
m, not with one pistol. He pulled the phone out of his pocket and tried dialing the number Malachi had given him.

  Disconnected from network.

  He swore and threw the phone against a tree.

  They pressed on, slower, and Scott knew that they’d need a miracle to get out of this alive. He figured they had about an hour before their reunion came to a bloody end. He offered a silent prayer, not caring if it made sense or if he even knew to whom he was praying. He held the gun in one hand and Jennifer’s hand in the other.

  Ten minutes later, the clouds let loose their load, but it was freezing rain instead of snow this time. Within seconds, Jennifer’s hair was soaking wet and matted to her face. She was shivering, arms folded, and teeth chattering.

  “Here,” he said, and took off his jacket, putting it over hers.

  “Thanks.”

  He pulled his hood up. “You have no idea what’s going on, do you?”

  She shook her head. “They said they found you, told me to go with them. Next thing I know I’m blindfolded and injected with something. Then I’m put in a car and brought out here.” She paused. “That’s what I know.”

  The rain erased the remaining snow, and revealed once more the leaves covering the forest floor. He had to speak up so that she could hear him over the sound of it. “There’s more you need to know. Something I have to tell you.”

  “About what that guy said? About the terror attack in Los Angeles?”

  He clenched his jaw, didn’t know what to say. Did he have to say anything? He was afraid of what she would think.

  She spoke again, taking the burden off him. “I know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I know. I know that it was an inside job.” She looked up at him. “I know about the drills. I know what you did. I know all about what you used to do.”

  His face contorted into a mask of confusion. “How could—”

  She cut him off, raising her voice over the falling rain. “After you disappeared, I got a visit from the CIA. They told me they had reason to believe you were still alive. They wanted to know if you’d contacted me. The agent told me about what happened in Iran. He told me they set you up, tried to get rid of you. Because of what you knew.”

  “He told you what I knew?”

  “Pieces of it. But that’s all I needed. I went online and started investigating everything I could, became a fanatic. Found that there was this whole movement dedicated to exposing the government’s involvement in the attack and trying to reveal the role of terrorism within the globalist plot to usher in a New World Order.”

  Scott knew of those groups. They had been around for a while, and he knew their theories were often close to the mark — at least once you got past the straw men the media put up to discredit their message. “What did he say?”

  “He said the government was lying about what really happened. He said somehow you were involved. He claimed to be your friend, said he wanted to help you.”

  “Yeah right,” he muttered.

  “I know all about what happened. Well, as much as anyone can, I guess. And I know you were involved.” She stopped walking, turned and faced him. Water was dripping all down her face, but he could tell she was trying not to cry. “I don’t care.”

  He stared at her.

  “I forgive you. I don’t care.”

  Her gaze was piercing, and he couldn’t stand it. Tears began swelling up in his own eyes.

  “I know you’re not a monster, that you’re torn apart by what they made you do! I know that’s why you disappeared!”

  “So many people,” he whispered.

  She grabbed his sweatshirt. “Let me help you bear the burden of it.”

  And then he couldn’t hold back any longer, the guilt finally venting through torrents of convulsing sobs.

  She wrapped her arms around him and cried with him. “I forgive you,” she kept saying.

  He collapsed to his knees and pulled her down with him. And there, in the mud, under curtains of falling water with soldiers hunting them down, they held each other, refusing to let go.

  “I’m sorry I left you. It was the only way I knew how to protect you,” he stuttered. He was running his hands over her face, brushing the hair out of her eyes.

  “I know,” she said, still crying. “I thought you were dead, but then they came and I…”

  “They told me you’d been killed. I wasn’t there to protect you…”

  She touched his face, like she couldn’t believe it was real. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Vermont.”

  She laughed, choking on her tears and the falling rain. “I missed you so much.”

  He kissed her, and she kissed him back, as their hands moved up and down their bodies in a frenzy barely containable. Neither one could bring themselves to actually believe it was happening, that it was real. That they were together. Forgetting about the soldiers, about the world around them, they rolled into the mud until Scott came up on top of her. He traced her face with a finger. “I’m sorry I wasn’t the husband you deserved,” he whispered.

  She leaned up and kissed him. “I didn’t appreciate how hard you tried until you were gone. Every day I wished that I could go back and do it differently. To be there for you.”

  “No. You were right. I should’ve quit when I had the chance. I didn’t know…”

  “Shhh.” She put a finger over his lips. “God’s given us a second chance.” And then she grabbed the back of his head and pulled his face down to hers again.

  He was lost in a dream, lost in over a decade of futile hopes never realized. Only now they had been. And it changed everything. Changed him. He could feel it already. He didn’t know what it meant or where it would lead, but he could tell that the conflict he’d been feeling over the last few days was somehow coming to an end.

  As they lost themselves in each other’s arms, their surroundings disappeared, and they were unable to notice the cold, the rain, the mud…

  Or the men sneaking up on them.

  42

  He spotted them from the corner of his eye, men silently closing in on them from out of nowhere. He started to reach for his gun, but thought better of it. Rolling off Jennifer, Scott raised his hands. It was the only thing he could think to do that would buy them some more time. If he forced a gunfight, then both he and Jennifer would be killed, and if they tried running for it, they’d be shot in the back. He knew that these guys wouldn’t kill them if they didn’t have to. They would still want to know where the ring was. But then he recognized two of the men. They were from Malachi’s Mossad team.

  Before Scott could say anything, however, the closest Israeli agent, barely visible through bare underbrush and curtains of falling rain, lifted a finger to his lips, informing Scott to remain silent.

  Scott leaned over and put his mouth to Jennifer’s ear. “Stay still.” And he slowly pulled out the pistol.

  “Psst.”

  Scott looked behind him in time to see another Mossad agent come slithering through the undergrowth beside him.

  “There’s three left,” he whispered. “We lost them a hundred meters northeast.”

  “Special Forces?” Scott whispered back.

  He nodded, raising his semi-automatic machine gun and disappearing back into the woods.

  Scott laid down beside Jennifer. “Lay on your stomach,” he whispered.

  She was confused, worry darting back and forth in her eyes, but she obeyed.

  Scott climbed on top of her, shielding her, and held the pistol out in front of him, aiming into the dripping seasonal portrait.

  Two minutes later, one of the NAU Special Forces soldiers came walking out of the rain right in front of him. Because the rain was falling so hard, splashing mud all over them and hiding them against their surroundings, the soldier couldn’t see them. Both he and Jennifer watched as the soldier moved his weapon back and forth, searching. Scott prepared to shoot, and he could feel Jennifer’s shivering body te
nse up beneath him as she braced for it. He hoped he didn’t have to do it, that she didn’t have to see it.

  But he did.

  The soldier’s eyes fell on them, and the gun in his hands began to swing in their direction.

  Scott squeezed the trigger three times, and the 9mm bullets struck the soldier in the shoulder and side, twisting him to the ground, the assault rifle in his hand erupting in a reactionary burst that kicked up some mud and sent some bark flying.

  And then more gunshots suddenly exploded out of the stillness, and the struggling soldier disappeared beneath a hanging mist of red.

  The whole area blew up in exchanged firepower.

  Jennifer squirmed under her husband, trying to cover her ears against the sound of SAWs working through belts of ammo and reports from grenade launchers shaking the ground. But soon, the battle began drifting southeast and away from them.

  “Come on,” he said, getting to his knees and pulling her up. Her whole front was covered in mud, and she was freezing. “Stay with me. We can do this.” And he led her west, the gunfire disappearing behind them within minutes. Thunder rumbled through the sky.

  After what seemed like an hour of walking, Scott grabbed Jennifer. “Hold on.”

  Her teeth chattered as she looked around, eyes wide. “What?”

  “Shhh.” Peering through the rain, he slowly raised the gun and began circling around her, acting as a shield. He could feel them closing in.

  And one of Malachi’s men burst through a wall of undergrowth beside them, almost getting himself shot.

  Scott relaxed and let the pistol drop to his side as two more agents appeared, one holding his shoulder and the other limping. Scott tucked the 9mm into the back of his pants. “Thanks,” he stated. Whatever their intentions, they had saved their lives.

  The uninjured Israeli, the one who had whispered in his ear back there in the mud, acknowledged the thanks with a simple nod before looking over to Jennifer. “Are you alright?”

  Jennifer nodded her head, still confused, her face stricken of all color.