God's Lions: The Secret Chapel (33 page)

“Yeah, this is really weird. I think we need to have a little talk with Leo about her.”

“I agree. This is just too much of a coincidence. There’s a connection here somewhere.”

The jet leveled out and the noise from the engines fell from full power to cruise as Sarah unbuckled her seatbelt and walked forward to begin preparing lunch for her guests.

John reached across the aisle and tapped Leo on the shoulder. “Can we have a word with you, Father?”

“In a minute, John. I’m a little busy at the moment.”

“But this is really important, Leo.”

“So is this.” Leo watched Alon from the corner of his eye and tried to keep a straight face as he showed John the four kings he was holding in his hand.

“Ok,” John said, “but we really need to talk when you’re through.”

Up in the front of the cabin, Sarah was quietly humming to herself as she pulled some food trays from the freezer compartment. She reached up to grab some napkins when she caught the first whiff of something burning. She stepped back and looked at the oven, but then remembered she hadn’t started cooking yet. She froze. An in-flight fire was a flight crew’s worst nightmare.

Within seconds, a misty, red-tinged smoke began to drift through the cabin. Sarah let the trays fall from her hands and jerked open the cockpit door to alert the pilots. She was horrified to see that the cockpit was also filling with smoke, a reddish smoke that was punctuated by the acrid smell of sulfur. A piercing alarm began to sound as a series of red lights flashed on the instrument panel in front of the pilots.

While the mystified crew was trying to process the flood of conflicting information from their instruments, the starboard engine suddenly flamed out and stopped. Confused by this sudden series of events, the copilot called air-traffic control and declared an emergency, while the captain performed a one hundred eighty degree turn back toward the airport.

The plane was still over the Mediterranean with nowhere to land, but the crew had no choice except to descend in a controlled emergency dive. The pilots donned full facemasks, while small yellow oxygen masks fell from the ceiling in the passenger compartment and dangled in front of the five souls who were now beginning to gasp for air.

John and Ariella grabbed two masks and placed them over their faces, breathing in the fresh air while staring into each other’s eyes, wondering if their future together would be only a brief dream before the jet slammed into the sea below. Leo’s winning poker hand was scattered on the floor as he and Alon slipped their masks over their heads and tightened their seatbelts. Without warning, the second engine flamed-out, leaving the jet totally without power. The multimillion-dollar jet had just turned into a heavy glider and plummeted toward the water below.

The captain fought for control of the aircraft and shouted for Sarah to prepare the passengers for a water landing. Inching her way back into the cabin, Sarah strapped herself into a seat and held an oxygen mask to her face. She looked around the cabin and lifted her mask just long enough to instruct her passengers on how to brace themselves for a crash landing.

Alon noticed the absence of sound from the engines. “Both engines are out!”

“Airplanes can still land without power from the engines,” Sarah said.

“They just can’t choose their landing site,” Alon replied, flashing Sarah a soldier’s smile that he and his comrades had adopted in the past when faced with overwhelming odds.

Time was now running out for the jet as it neared the surface of the water twenty miles off the coast.

“Put on your life jackets,” Sarah shouted to her passengers. “They’re stowed under your seats. Remember not to inflate them until you’ve exited the aircraft. If you inflate them too soon, you’ll bob to the ceiling as the plane begins to sink, and you won’t be able to get out. When we get close to the water, I’ll call for you to assume crash positions.”

The smoke in the cabin had become intense and was interfering with the pilot’s ability to see out of the cockpit. They were attempting to level out when the blue of the Mediterranean Sea loomed in front of their windows and the jet slammed into a wave. The right wing submerged first, ripping it away as the plane began to cartwheel over the sea, tearing the main cabin open and scattering pieces of the aircraft along the path of destruction. The jet flipped two more times before finally coming to a stop and taking another wave over the top of the fuselage. Sea water rushed in and what was left of the main cabin quickly began to sink.

Moshe ran into the villa, shouting and gesturing like a crazy man as he ran up the stairs and heaved himself into Lev’s room.

Standing in front of his bathroom mirror wearing only khaki shorts, Lev was busy trimming his beard with a pair of scissors. In the mirror, he saw the reflection of Moshe standing in the doorway, tears streaming down his face.

“We just got a call from Nava,” Moshe blurted. “She heard over her radio that the jet just crashed into the Mediterranean.”

Lev dropped the scissors in the sink and stared into the mirror before turning to face Moshe. In his mind, he could still see Ariella’s face as she waved goodbye to him from the ground as the helicopter lifted into the air. His daughter, his beautiful Ariella. Anyone but her!

One of the female staff members came running into the room behind Moshe. “Oh, no, God. It can’t be!” She pulled her short black hair back with her hands, stretching the skin on her face and making her eyes look cat-like as she stared at Lev and Moshe, the tears flowing down her face.

As news of the crash sent a wave of sadness over the villa, some gathered downstairs, not knowing where to go or what to do, while others walked out to the beach to stare at the sea, hoping for a sign. Somewhere out there, God had just decided the fate of their friends.

Many wept and prayed for a miracle, but most knew that a high-speed jet crash was usually not survivable, even in water. Only a few hours before, they had all been together, safe at the villa, watching a tragedy unfold on the other side of the world. Now tragedy had visited their world.

Lev sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands while Moshe stood by silently, his hand resting on his old friend’s shoulder. Lev choked. He raised his head and looked up at Moshe through tear-filled eyes. “Call the chopper. We’re going out there to look for them. There might be survivors.”

The main cabin had sunk to the bottom of the Mediterranean, where it had come to rest in the inky blackness for the past hour. Pieces of wreckage still floated about on the surface of the water, and the smell of jet fuel lingered in the air. Miraculously, there had been survivors.

Sadly, the pilots had not survived the initial impact; their cockpit was crushed when it nosedived into a wave as the plane cartwheeled over the water. When the sea rushed into the cabin, Sarah’s emergency training kicked in. She unbuckled herself from her seat and pulled an emergency ring by the door, releasing a life raft that automatically inflated when it hit the water.

John had struggled to free Ariella who had been knocked unconscious and was still strapped in her seat. Leo and Alon had been flung from the aircraft through a ruptured hole in its side but suffered only cuts and bruises. They had paddled their way back into the sinking plane and helped John free Ariella before the cabin began its downward plunge to the sea floor.

The four bobbed to the surface, where John held Ariella’s limp form in his arms. She began to moan and slowly regained consciousness as they floated amid the pieces of wreckage. “What happened?”

“The plane crashed, Ariella,” John said.

“It what?”

“Try not to move too much. You might have a head injury.”

They found Sarah floating on her back, holding onto the inflated raft. She was wracked with fits of coughing from inhaling sea water. Unable to climb into the raft, Leo and Alon swam up beside her. The men then gently lifted both women over the sides and climbed in next to them. Aside from some cuts and bruises and one possible concussion, the group had survived the crash relatively unscathed.

John looked over at Leo while he stroked the water off Ariella’s forehead. “How did we survive that?”

“I don’t have a clue, John,” Leo said. “We were probably going in excess of two hundred miles an hour when I saw the right wing slice into a wave. Hitting the water at that speed is like hitting concrete.”

The group sat in the sloshing water inside the raft, too much in shock to feel any emotion. Ariella was now completely awake but still had no memory of the crash. They scanned the surface of the water for any sign of the pilots, but they all knew in their hearts that the men had now joined centuries of ancient sailors on the bottom of the Mediterranean.

Squeezing the mixture of jet fuel and sea water from her hair, Sarah reached into a bag stowed in the raft and activated the jet’s emergency locator beacon. She then produced a first aid kit and began tending to the minor wounds when Leo suddenly sat up and began frantically searching the sea around them. “The book, John! Where did you put the backpack?”

John’s eyes widened. “I put it next to my seat on the floor of the cabin ... and that’s the last time I saw it.” John leaned back and covered his face with his hands. “It’s probably on the bottom of the ocean by now.”

Leo slumped in the raft, unable to think anymore. Survival was now their only priority. They would have to deal with the loss of the book later. He remembered the reddish smoke in the cabin and the smell of sulfur.
Satan finally got his Bible back after all.

Nava’s large Blackhawk helicopter landed in front of the villa within minutes of being notified of the crash. She kept it on the ground just long enough to allow Lev and Moshe to climb onboard before she practically jumped the chopper back into the air and sped out over the beach, skimming the waves en route to the scene.

They flew in the direction of the crash with grim determination. Only the whitecaps of some breaking waves were visible to the searchers as they scanned a vacant blue sea around them. Continuing on, they were finally able to see ships and helicopters in the distance, and within minutes they were passing over an Israeli Navy vessel that was rushing to the scene.

Circling overhead, Nava watched several inflatable speedboats drop from the large ship and race toward a small yellow life raft bobbing in the middle of a floating debris field. A navy chopper swung in front of them and flew in low over the drifting wreckage before coming to an abrupt hover as two pararescue divers jumped into the water.

“There are survivors,” Gabriella shouted into her headset microphone. Lev and Moshe strained to see between the tops of the swells. Everyone back at the villa listening to the radio transmissions from the helicopter began to jump and shout for joy. People had survived. But how many?

Lev and Moshe finally saw the life raft and began to count. There were five. Unless they had been picked up by another aircraft or boat, two were missing. They scanned the horizon in an effort to see any bright-colored life jackets floating nearby.

Nava flew her helicopter in beside the navy chopper and radioed the Israeli Navy for permission to pick up survivors. As the big Blackhawk came in low, Lev looked down and suddenly burst out in tears when he saw the face of Ariella looking up at him from the small raft rising over the crests of the waves in the water below. His body was wracked by sobs of joy as everyone was quickly winched aboard and he was finally able to hold his dazed and shivering daughter in his arms once again.

Nava was hovering less than twenty feet above the surface preparing to depart when John suddenly shouted something to Leo before jumping from the open door and splashing into the water below.

“What’s he doing?” Nava shouted. “Has he lost his mind?”

John was swimming like a madman toward something bobbing in the water. A small speedboat from one of the ships arrived and pulled up alongside of him just as he reached the object and pulled it to his chest. Two burly Israeli sailors reached out and yanked him from the water while he held the backpack above his head for everyone in the helicopter to see.

“What kind of idiotic stunt was that?” one of the sailors said to him. “You could have been killed. No piece of luggage is worth that.”

“This one is,” John said.

As soon as he was winched back aboard the helicopter, John opened the backpack. The Devil’s Bible was still resting securely inside, untouched by the crash. Leo could only smile with relief. They had the book, but they were still in Israel. Leo started to speak, but Moshe held up his hand. “I’ll say it for you, Father. Now, one more time, John: never
ever
let that book out of your sight again.”

Nava tilted her Blackhawk toward the shore, and after a short but speedy flight, they were landing on the roof of the hospital in Tel Aviv, where they would spend the next few hours being X-rayed and prodded until the doctors were satisfied that it was safe to send them home.

Sitting next to each other in the hospital waiting room, Ariella and John began describing Sarah’s dream to Father Leo.

“You’re kidding,” Leo said. “She actually said she heard the word chosen?”

They both nodded their heads. “Those were her exact words, Father.”

Leo had to think this one through. “Give her some time to rest after we get back to the villa, Ariella. If she is truly one of the chosen, God will reveal His plan to us soon enough. I have a feeling she is here for a reason, so if she starts asking questions, tell her the truth.”

As the helicopter lifted off from the hospital roof, everyone who had been in the crash sat frozen in silence. Their nerves were frayed, and their expressions had taken on the thousand-yard stare, a look frequently seen on fatigued combat soldiers who had witnessed horror that exceeded their imaginations.

Within minutes, they were landing on the lawn in front of the villa, where they were surrounded by all of their friends who tearfully welcomed them home and escorted them to their rooms. Ariella was trying hard to let Sarah decompress in a strange environment, but after hearing all the whispers surrounding her arrival at the villa, Sarah insisted on learning the truth behind their flight to Rome. Ariella led her upstairs to a dorm-like room, and while some of the girls from the villa gave her dry clothes and some food, Ariella began telling Sarah about the dreams and the Bible code and the special group of people who were called
chosen
.