Fuse of Armageddon (56 page)

Now they were over the water. Maybe a half mile offshore. Not so far away that the girl and the pilot would be at risk in the water.

“I’m going to tell the pilot to go lower.” Quinn didn’t wait for Safady’s answer. He motioned to Orellana, pointing downward. He pantomimed the rest of his plan. He pointed at Orellana and the girl, then pointed out of the chopper, making a diving motion with his hand, followed by swimming motions. Then Quinn pointed at himself, pantomiming that he would fly the chopper. He hoped Orellana would understand the implications and keep a poker face.

Orellana stared at him hard for a few seconds, then nodded, his face blank. He turned the chopper downward.

“Let me speak to the pilot and explain,” Quinn said.

“No. You have no communication with him.”

“Then when I give the pilot back the headset, you tell him our plan. You tell him I’m going to fly. Tell him he’s dropping in the water, and he needs to make sure he keeps the girl safe in the water with him.”

The chopper was down to a thousand feet. Moonlight dappled the water. It was calm. If Billy and the girl jumped from a low enough altitude, the girl would be fine.

“You can fly this?” Safady asked. Quinn knew he had the man. Safady wanted to live badly enough to take the deal.

“I can fly it,” Quinn said. He’d been watching Orellana with the controls. He knew enough to lift the chopper again and move it forward. Out to sea. He didn’t need to know anything more. Not with the nuclear device about to detonate within minutes.

Because Safady had guessed wrong. Quinn
was
willing to die.

If you weren’t going to make it out of the lion’s den, the next best thing was to make sure the lion would never get out again either.

53

Over the Mediterranean • 21:52 GMT


I
nfidel,
Safady thought.
He has no idea how much I hate him.

The chopper was low enough now that the wash from the blades was beating the water below to a froth. Quinn’s side of the chopper was open to the night air.

The girl stood in the opening, clutching the side because she had no crutches to help her stand, swaying with the movement of the chopper. She was wearing an inflated life jacket, far too large for her. Her eyes were closed tight. There was resignation on her face, not fear.

“The girl goes first,” Safady said. He reached over, keeping his eyes on the pilot and his machine gun trained in place. With his other hand, he felt for the girl’s fingers and pried them loose. Safady gave the girl a shove but didn’t look to see if she’d fallen. Too much at stake.

Safady’s eyes were still on the pilot. “Your turn.”

Quinn’s plan was sound, but Safady was about to change it. He only needed a pilot, and a pilot would be strongly motivated by self-preservation to keep the chopper safe.

But the pilot didn’t need to be Quinn.

Safady was going to enjoy shooting Quinn and kicking his body out into the water.

Dome of the Rock • 21:52 GMT


Inside the shrine, Paulie grinned at Stefan. “It’s about time we had an easy one.”

Stefan grinned back. “No arguing this time.”

It was an extremely simple setup. It had obviously been put together by someone with little sophistication and little time.

The timer was down to sixty seconds. But Paulie had his wire cutters poised over a center wire. It was the only connection that mattered. Without a detonator, the C-4 was harmless. After snipping the connection to the timer, it would be easy to remove the explosives.

“Plug your ears,” Paulie said. Old joke between the two of them.

Stefan obliged.

Paulie snipped through the wire. He winced some. Hard not to.

“That’s it?” Stefan asked.

“That’s it,” Paulie answered. “All is well that ends well.”

Over the Mediterranean • 21:54 GMT


Quinn watched the girl fall into the darkness. Time to get Orellana into the water to help her.

He glanced at the clock on the chopper controls. Six minutes. Still time to get the chopper farther out from shore after the pilot was gone.

Orellana handed Quinn the headset.

“When you unbuckle your harness,” Safady told Quinn through the headset, “no sudden moves. After it’s unharnessed, you put the headset down on the seat again. I’m going to stand back and give you plenty of room to take the controls. Again, no sudden moves.”

Quinn nodded. He was conscious of blood running down his face. He unbuckled slowly and stood slowly. Orellana kept the chopper steady.

Quinn made his first step around the back of the seat.

Safady stepped in front of him and lifted the machine-gun barrel, pointing it at Quinn’s chest.

Quinn was aware of the open chopper door behind him. He understood. Safady had a safe backdrop for a spray of bullets.

Safady grinned as if he realized that Quinn knew his intentions.

Quinn braced for impact.

And in the next second, he felt himself plunge backward.

Temple Mount, Jerusalem • 21:54 GMT


“Stay with me,” Esther pleaded with Silver. “Don’t give up now.”

“Hurts,” he said. “Ice.”

The cold of shock. She prayed that God would spare his life.

“Arm around my shoulder,” she said. “Hold on. Just a few more minutes.”

She squatted beside him and did her best to help him stand. She tottered under his weight and nearly fell backward. Shifting slowly, Esther managed to put Silver’s upper body across the top of the red heifer. She expected it to bolt. But her prayers were answered. The heifer remained docile.

She lifted Silver’s legs. “Hold the neck. Just a few more minutes.”

With Silver’s upper body in place, Esther grabbed his legs and swung them upward. Again she feared the heifer would bolt. And again her prayers were answered when it remained steady.

There was enough of Silver’s weight on the heifer now that Esther was able to arrange his legs easily. When she was finished, he was straddling the heifer completely, the tips of his toes dangling near the ground.

“Hang on,” she urged Silver. She meant it figuratively . . . and literally. “Please, just hang on.” Then she urged the heifer forward.

Christ had ridden a donkey to His death in Jerusalem. She prayed that Jonathan Silver would be able to ride the red heifer of sacrifice to survival.

Over the Mediterranean • 21:54 GMT


Safady laughed.

Let the infidel die,
he thought.

Safady started to squeeze his trigger finger, but his world tilted, a sudden roar filling his consciousness, and he lost all balance. It took him a moment to realize that the roar was the chopper engines—that the headset had ripped loose from his head.

And that he was falling toward the water.

54

Over the Mediterranean • 21:55 GMT


Billy Orellana relaxed. He had plenty of time. He had seen Safady ready to shoot and, still at the controls, had turned the chopper violently on its side, flipping Safady and Quinn out the open door before Safady could fire the machine gun.

The chopper had swung back and forth, its blades seeming to almost touch the water, and Orellana had fought it back into horizontal position. As the craft settled into place again, Orellana had gunned it forward and had already put a few miles between the chopper and Quinn.

Quinn would be alive in the water. The girl had a life jacket. Safady had probably lost his machine gun. Orellana would give it another three minutes to dump the bomb farther out to sea, then turn around and find the girl by following the flashing beacon on her life jacket.

He didn’t know what wave effect the bomb would cause, but he knew that Quinn and the girl would be fine. They’d just bob like corks as the wave passed beneath them.

Orellana glanced behind him to make sure of the backpack’s position. It would be tricky to throw it out himself but not impossible.

Then he felt as if someone had jabbed amphetamine into his heart.

The backpack was gone.

Gone!

There was only one place it could be. It must have tumbled out of the chopper when Orellana tilted it on its side.

The bomb was in the water far enough offshore not to be a risk to anyone on land. That meant the safe choice for Orellana was to keep going and sacrifice Quinn and the girl.

Mediterranean Sea • 21:55 GMT


When Quinn surfaced, coughing for air, the chopper’s roar was already fading.

In the air, he’d seen a blur of the chopper’s lights—enough to figure out what had happened. He’d felt, rather than heard, the splash of another large object.

Dazed from the blow across his face, he tried to orient himself. His hand brushed against something, just beneath the surface and sinking slowly.

Kicking to keep his head above the water, Quinn grabbed it.

The backpack! It had enough air in it to offset some of the weight of the Davy Crockett.

Quinn fought the weight of the backpack briefly, not thinking clearly. What was he going to do? Grab the girl and outswim a nuclear blast?

The shore lights were barely visible above the gentle swell of the waves. He guessed they’d made it a couple of miles out. When the bomb exploded, the buildings and people on land were out of danger. The deeper the bomb sank before detonation, the better for civilians on the shore. Not that a couple hundred feet of water would protect Quinn and the girl from the blast and the shock and the geyser.

Quinn dropped the backpack, and it fell slowly from his hands.

Here he was, in a place where there was no sense fighting life or death any longer. Safady had escaped him, but no matter what Safady tried in terms of hijacking the chopper, time was running out for him, too.

The girl would die with Quinn. But instantly and without understanding what had happened. Quinn took what solace he could from that.

A minute passed as he waited for the bomb to detonate.

Then Quinn heard the girl scream.

Temple Mount, Jerusalem • 21:56 GMT


Esther and Silver and the red heifer stood at the exit to the Temple Mount. Below, at the plaza, she saw the swarm of soldiers and paramedics.

“Help,” she said to a soldier guarding the exit. “This man’s been shot.”

“You need to be searched for weapons and explosives,” he said. “I have orders not to let anyone leave the Temple Mount.”

“This man just risked his life to save the Dome of the Rock from destruction,” she snapped. “Do you have any idea of the war that would have broken out in Israel if he hadn’t?”

The soldier blinked. The harsh, white floodlights showed him to be barely more than a boy.

“He’s an American,” Esther said more quietly. “If he dies because no one here would save him, it will be a great embarrassment to Israel. Save him. You will be serving your country just as much as he did.”

Another few blinks. Then he reached for his walkie-talkie.

Seconds later, paramedics burst toward the stairs.

If Silver were conscious, Esther thought, she’d enjoy the chance to remind him of the irony that the sacrificial heifer had saved his life.

Mediterranean Sea • 21:56 GMT


Where is the girl?

Quinn kicked off his shoes. He dog-paddled, trying to lift his head as far out of the water as possible. He heard another scream to his left, twenty yards maybe. He saw movement in the water—dark, blurred objects. A flashing light.

Quinn could have gone into an overhand crawl, essentially sprinting through the water. But it would make too much noise.

He ducked his head into the water and began a stealthy breast stroke toward the noises. Even in the dark, it didn’t take him long to understand what was happening. The life jacket had a flashing beacon that threw off enough light.

Safady was fighting the girl in the water, trying to take away her life jacket.

Safady? Had the man fallen from the chopper too?

Murderous heat surged through Quinn. Safady would drown the child to ensure his own safety. He swam harder, now keeping his head above the water. The girl’s arms were above her head. Safady was pushing her under, and had managed to slide her out of the life jacket.

Quinn had no illusions. The girl was going to die in the nuclear blast. But he wasn’t going to let her die in terror or with water filling her lungs as she desperately thrashed for air.

He reached the girl and, kicking hard with his feet, held her head above the water.

Safady ignored the life jacket and attacked.

Quinn held the girl in his left arm and threw a punch that bounced off Safady’s skull, an ineffective blow because Quinn was hampered by the weight of the girl and had no way to brace himself to throw his weight into the punch.

It was enough, however, to move Safady away briefly. Quinn took advantage of it. He grabbed the life jacket and thrust it into the girl’s arms.

Safady paddled away, and Quinn made the mistake of following, too eager in his lust for murder.

Safady’s move, however, was just a feint. As Quinn closed in, Safady kicked hard, the heel of his boot bouncing off Quinn’s forehead. It dazed Quinn, and he slipped under the water.

He fought for the surface, but Safady reached him just as his mouth reached the air. Safady rolled his full weight onto Quinn, pushing him under.

Quinn kicked and struggled but could not lift both of them out of the water. He was totally submerged, his mouth closed tight. His lungs fought for air, and the noise in his ears seemed like a train rumbling through his skull.

Then he felt Safady’s hands around his throat. Quinn reached for Safady’s wrists, but the man was too strong and Quinn couldn’t pull them away. The rumbling of the train grew louder and louder. It was black, confusing, and still Quinn kicked with his last ounce of energy. It was futile, and he knew it.