The Aleppo Code (The Jerusalem Prophecies)

by Terry Brennan

“I can feel it,” said Annie.

  “Where’s the flashlight?”

  “Kaput.”

  “Well, the staff is kaput, too. It was alive in the tree. But now it’s dead and dried—like it’s been petrified.” He could feel Rodriguez’s hand on his shoulder. “Now what?”

  “Now would be a good time for the marines,” said Rizzo. “Except they couldn’t find us. Hey, Tom, maybe you could part the darkness with that magic stick of yours.”

  “I’m not waving this at anything or anybody, I don’t care how dead it looks. Listen, does anybody have any matches?”

  “Oh, man. What a doofus,” said Rizzo. “Wait a minute. I’ve got a lighter in my pocket, if it’s still there. Low tech. You’re a genius.”

  The shaft of flame seared Bohannon’s eyes as Rizzo held up the cheap lighter. “Left over from a U2 concert,” said Rizzo. “They were pretty good, so I’ve got no clue how much fuel is left. Can anybody see anything?”

  “Can you see anything?”

  Michael Papa, standing on the Land Rover’s hood, scanned the darkness with his night-vision binoculars. “Nothing. There’s nothing moving over there.”

  It had been too long. Whalen knew that. After he and Atkins, double-timing on foot, made it back to the rally point on the far side of the gaping square that was once the Tower of Babel’s foundation, he wrestled with what to do next. He and his men were exposed, sitting next to this hole in the ground. The crew had converged on the rally point and decided to wait, and hope, for some kind of contact with Bohannon and the others. Time was running out.

  “Somebody is going to wander down this way sooner or later,” said Papa.

  Whalen walked over to the verge of the huge, square hole that fell away into the depths of the desert and sat on an earthen mound that rimmed the foundation. They still had a couple of hours before the sun came up, but he wanted to be long gone from here by then. He didn’t want to be anywhere in the open when it got light.

  Sal Molluzzo, the mechanic, drifted over next to Whalen, planted his boot on the dirt rim, and leaned against his thigh. “One of the Rovers has a puncture in the gas tank. I’ve plugged it for now.”

  “Okay … thanks. Everything else in shape?”

  “For a bunch of beat-up old beasts, these vehicles are—Hey! What’s that?”

  Molluzzo was looking past Whalen’s shoulder, down into the hole of the foundation. Whalen swung his legs around to the other side of the mound and followed Molluzzo’s gaze into the black below them.

  “Do you see it?” asked Molluzzo.

  Far below, a speck in the dark void, but a visible speck—a wavering light breaking the darkness. “That’s a flame. Sal, get the sealed beam.”

  “Here, Sammy. Let me hold it up higher,” said Rodriguez. He took the lighter and held it high over his head. “It doesn’t throw much light. I can’t see anything except my feet.”

  “Those boats—who could miss them? I think …”

  “Do you think it’s them?”

  Atkins was hovering over the hole with the rest of the team at his side. “Could be the bad guys.”

  “Gotta take the chance,” said Whalen. “Who else would be deep under Babylon in the middle of the night? Sal, do you have the hood secure on that beam?”

  Molluzzo was lying flat on the ground, his arms extended into the open foundation. The sealed-beam light was held at arm’s length and had a fiberboard hood around it—like blinders on a racehorse. The light would shine down, but very little of it would be visible above the hole … or a half-mile away in Babylon. “Set to go.”

  “Hit it.”

  He snapped on the high-beam spotlight that the National Geographic crew often used on night shoots and directed the beam into the famous tower’s foundation, toward where they had seen the flickering light.

  A bright bolt of light from above split the darkness and covered them with a shimmering twilight. Joe looked up, waiting for judgment.

  Whalen strained his eyes to see something, strained his ears to hear anything.

  “Flash the light, Fred. Two long, three short.”

  “That’s them! That’s Whalen.” Annie squeezed Bohannon’s arm. “It’s a night signal we used to use on shoots. It means ‘good to go.’ Joe, three long, two short to respond.”

  “Bingo. That’s them. Grant, do we still have that block-and-tackle gear?”

  “Yeah. It’s stowed in my Rover.”

  “Get it. Quick. We need to move.”

  The spotlight was now shining into the foundation, reflecting off the walls and providing a diffused, gray twilight where Bohannon and his team waited at the bottom of the deep hole.

  “How did we get here?” asked Rodriguez. “I mean, it doesn’t really matter, does it? But still. We didn’t move after the lights went out. And we sure weren’t standing under that opening. But without moving, here we are?”

  Bohannon looked up at the rim of the opening, so far above. “I’m more concerned about how they’re going to get us out of here. That’s a long way.”

  “Maybe we’ll just take the elevator,” said Rizzo. “They can beam me up, feet first, for all I care. As long as I don’t have to ride the rapids again.”

  Bohannon kept his eyes on the opening, mumbling to himself. “Elevator. That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Whalen finished printing his instructions, rolled up the paper, fastened it with some twine, and then tied it to the bosun’s seat swinging from the end of the rope that was threaded through the assembled block-and-tackle. Normally, this rig was used for dropping a photographer over a cliff, or off a wall—somewhere you couldn’t get to by walking or climbing. The other end stretched back to the nearest Rover and passed through a pair of pulleys, Bowman and Vordenberg ready to lower and hoist as needed.

  “What are you telling them?” asked James Leonard.

  “One at a time, sit in the middle of the seat, don’t move around a lot, and Annie should come out first. Something else?”

  “Yeah,” said the Brit. “Don’t dawdle.”

  Annie and Joe got up without a hitch and Rizzo was singing an aria as he was pulled up through the foundation. Bohannon was checking out his body, trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t.

  He imagined he looked like Bruce Willis near the end of a Die Hard movie. Both his knees ached from his collision with the cave wall as he was washed along the underground river. His head hurt from hitting something, his wrists were sore, and his right shoulder was a mess—worse after Joe had pushed down with his 220 pounds, trying to free Rizzo. Before she was lifted out, Annie fashioned a rudimentary sling from some strips of cloth, and Tom tried to keep his right forearm against his chest to minimize the pain. Joe had offered to carry the staff when he was pulled up to the surface, but Tom already felt a strong attachment to this stick and wasn’t about to let it out of his sight. He had crossed his left arm over his right, cradling his right elbow in his left hand, the staff resting in a left-to-right angle between his two arms.

  Now he felt pretty foolish for refusing Rodriguez’s offer.

  “Where’s the line for the Log Flume ride?” Rizzo was swaying above the hole in the earth, his head bobbing and his legs flapping. “And after that, the Mad Tea Party ride.”

  Rizzo flipped Whalen the lead cord and the ex-SEAL pulled him over to solid ground.

  “C’mon. Move it. We need to get Bohannon out of that hole and get ourselves out of town.”

  Vordenberg pulled Rizzo from the bosun’s chair and swung the arm back out over the foundation hole. “Go ahead. Drop it down.”

  If he kept his thoughts on his aches and pains, Bohannon didn’t have to worry his mind or kick in his fear of what was coming next.

  Rizzo’s singing had faded, and then stopped, as he got near the rim of the foundation.

  Bohannon looked up. The harness was dropping like a stone. In a flash his heartbeat started racing, his breathing became labored, and he broke out in a clammy sweat that gave his bod
y the shivers. He couldn’t remember how long he had been terrified of heights or why it had started. But he knew the next ten minutes would probably be the longest of his life.

  The note was still tied to the cross-hatch of canvas strips that made up the bosun’s seat, but he remembered what it said without reading it again: Sit still. Don’t move around. Stay in the middle of the seat. “God, help me.”

  Bohannon had the staff tightly pressed to his chest as he tried to hold every muscle in his body fixed in place. Eyes closed, he was thinking of anything to keep his mind off the ascent and what was below. Whether the Phillies’ aging lineup could manufacture one more run at the World Series, whether it was possible to make an ice cream better than Ben & Jerry’s chocolate, whether Jimmy Fallon could live up to the legacy of Jay Leno or Johnny Carson. It was working. Bohannon’s mind was half-a-world away. Maybe he nodded out. It had been a long time since any of them slept. Didn’t matter. He started back to consciousness, half in and half out of the harness. As he reached out with his left hand and grabbed the side of the harness, his right hand lost its grip on the staff, and it started to slide. His eyes flew open.

  There was no substance, no structure to the bosun’s seat harness, just strips of canvas. Nothing to hold his body steady. Even the motion of reaching out with his left hand made the harness unstable.

  All this in the split second it took for two things to happen: Bohannon clamped his knees on the staff like vise grips. And his open eyes stared into the void far below. Enough light to see the deep, not enough to see the bottom. Far. Down. His body tripped into a state he had visited many times before, whether he was watching a movie or standing on the edge of a cliff.

  An electric current ran a loop between his shoulder blades and sent shivers of shock down his spine and into his legs. At the same moment, a wave of nausea filled his throat, and behind his eyes vertigo made him light-headed. They all combined to make Bohannon feel certain that he was about to launch himself, hurtling and screaming, into the pit.

  Forget sitting still. Forget everything. Bohannon wrestled with dual realities of critical importance that flashed through his thoughts but supplanted his reason. Save the staff! Save yourself! God, help me.

  “Hey!” came a shout from above. “Grab the rope!”

  The rope!

  It was a moment of selfless decision. He let go with both hands. As his right hand grabbed hold of the shaft of Aaron’s staff, Bohannon’s left hand shot up, flailed about, then seized the knot where the rope was secured to the bosun’s seat … the rope to the surface … the rope that was secure. The seat rocked violently from the two desperate stabs that generated force in opposite directions. Bohannon still imagined himself falling into the abyss, but he strained every muscle in his left arm to pull himself deeper into the bosun’s chair, hand and knees squeezing the staff hard against his body.

  Bohannon pressed his eyes shut, shivered in a breath, and held fast not only to the rope, but also to his lifeline. Thank you, Lord.

  A light breeze added to the chill of the desert night, and once Molluzzo switched off the sealed beam, only the stars and a crescent moon filtered the darkness.

  Whalen helped Tom regain his balance, Annie on his opposite side, cradling Tom’s right arm, as he slipped out of the bosun’s chair at the rim of the foundation.

  “We almost lost you there.”

  “No sweat.” But Bohannon’s throat was as dry as the wadi that hid their tents. His voice croaked, and his words caught.

  “You got him?”

  “Yes, and I’m not letting go,” said Annie.

  “Okay. We gotta get moving. James, break down the rig. I don’t want to leave any trace, anything that could be followed. Grant, night lights. Steve, pull out two of the H&K MP7s, one in the front vehicle with us, the other in the rear vehicle with Fred. Grab that 357-magnum Desert Eagle for you—we may need the punch. And give one of the longer gun cases to Bohannon for that stick.”

  Gamal prepared his men as best he could. Three were with him, a few hundred meters south of the provincial police outpost at the main entrance to Babylon, Saddam Hussein’s re-creation of the Ishtar Gate. They were behind a small mound of sand, each on one knee. Their car sat behind them, the engine idling. One had come on a small motorcycle.

  Two other men were at the back gate, though there were grave questions about the reliability of the battered Jeep they drove. And two were mobile, circling the ancient city on an all-terrain vehicle stolen from the police supply depot, but focusing primarily on the northern perimeter—the direction they expected the National Geographic team to take once they left the city.

  Gamal cursed the dark, and the lazy police who failed to demand that the American photographers follow the rules and leave Babylon at dusk. The dark was as heavy as the heat of day, impenetrable where there was no light. But it was the lights that Gamal hoped for, the lights of the Americans’ vehicles leaving the city. The lights he would follow to their camp.

  They gathered in a small knot between the first and second Rover, Whalen and his crew. Vordenberg and Atkins finished wiping down and oiling the guns, James Leonard was handing out charged batteries for the radios, and Molluzzo was done with his final check of the Rovers. The civilians were at the back of the last vehicle, surrounding Bohannon and staring at Aaron’s staff.

  “We going to make a run for it?” asked Bowman.

  “I don’t think so,” said Whalen, keeping the volume of his voice down. “Most of our gear is still at camp, and that belongs to NG. Besides, we can navigate back to camp because we know its coordinates.”

  “Whoever was chasing these guys knows we’re around here somewhere,” said Atkins. “And this is their turf, not ours. The sooner we’re outta here the better.”

  Whalen nodded his head. “I know, I know. But, look … we’re not going anywhere but camp until it gets light. The last thing we want is to be wandering around in this desert in the middle of the night, looking for a way to escape. We can’t use the roads. We don’t know if there is any chance of getting Bohannon and his team back to Baghdad. Even if we knew where we were going for sure, there are ISIS bands out there, marauding tribal raiders, and now more military. Civil war is about to engulf this country. Yes, we need to get out of here, and we need to get out quickly. The problem is figuring the right way to do that without getting us all killed in the process. So we get back to camp, try to get some sleep, wait until it’s light, and hope no camel-jockey stumbles across us in the dark. We need to understand our options and then try to pick the best one. For now, let’s see if we can get back to camp without picking a fight.”

  Gamal toggled his radio. “Do you see anything?”

  “Nothing has come through the back gate. No one has even come near it,” said a weary voice. “How long do we wait?”

  “Until I tell you!” Gamal’s nerves were rattled, his anxiety growing. There had been no word from his men on Procession Street since they reported something moving in the shadows of twilight. They were good men. They would have contacted him if …

  He radioed to the men in the all-terrain vehicle. “Hassan, do you see anything?”

  “I would have called you if I did. We’ve been around the city twice, up and down this side countless times. We’ve seen nothing, no lights, no vehicles, no movement at all. As if the ruins have gone back to sleep.”

  “Well you had best remain awake. Take another sweep around the city. Move slowly. Check for tire tracks. They didn’t come out this way, either. They must be somewhere, but it’s not here. Look closely. We must find them.” His voice lowered, almost to a whisper, as if the words were only for him. “We must.”

  The red night-vision lights welded to the front bumper of the Land Rover turned the ruined clay brick walls into a nightmarish landscape as Mike Whalen threaded his way through the most dilapidated and ignored streets of ancient Babylon, south of the palace and Procession Street. The light was low to the ground and illuminated only a small arc
around the front of the Rover, but it was enough to guide Whalen and his team along the rubble-strewn streets until they emerged into the unmarked desert.

  Atkins watched the GPS screen, hooded with cardboard to minimize the light emitted. Whalen would drive, but it was Atkins’s job to concentrate on the GPS and guide them in the right direction. South, away from Babylon and farther away from Hillah and Baghdad, deep into the desert, where they would not be expected to hide.

  41

  6:43 p.m., New York City

  After being transformed into the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural & Educational Center, the old PS 160 school at the southwest corner of Suffolk and Rivington Streets on the Lower East Side of New York City got a new lease on life, but little else. It took up half a city block and, except for its community center designation, would have long ago succumbed to the wrecking ball, making way for another modern apartment tower. But neither the community nor the myriad poor arts groups that used it—nor the city itself—had the necessary disposable funds to fix its roof or improve its heating system or to do anything about saving the elaborately carved, but deteriorating, granite façade. Still … it survived.

  A small but well-reviewed acting troupe, the American Bard Theater Company, was staging its final performance of As You Like It that night. So as the several-dozen friends, fans, and family lingered in the lobby prior to the performance, Rory O’Neill led Connor Bohannon and Stew Manthey around the edge of the theatergoers into a hallway and up a flight of stairs to the second floor. O’Neill turned to his left at the top of the stairs and walked to the front of the building, entering a room that spanned the southwest corner.

  Inside the room, two men dressed for the Lower East Side—old jeans, ratty tee shirts, worn sneakers, needing a shave—stood by the windows, binoculars to their eyes as they scanned the streets, both talking into filament microphones that looped over their ears and held receivers in place.