He’d taken only a few steps when he heard a popping noise in the distance, like a short string of firecrackers exploding. It was the detonators that he had pulled free beneath the Dome, now igniting harmlessly in the rectangle chamber.
Dirk’s heart pounded like a sledgehammer as he realized the second cache would detonate at any second.
“Sophie . . . get out of there . . . now!” he shouted between pounding breaths.
Ahead in the tunnel he could see a faint glimmer of light, and he knew he was getting closer. Then he heard another series of pops, and he dove to the floor with an agonized heart.
The explosion shook the ground like an earthquake, accompanied by an earsplitting boom. Seconds later, the expanding force of exploding gasses burst through the tunnel with a roaring gust, blowing a shower of dust and rock in front of it. Dirk felt his body lift off the ground and slam into the wall, knocking the breath out of him. Hammered by rock and buried in a blanket of choking dust, he felt the world around him once again turn to black.
49
S
AM HAD BEEN STANDING WITH HIS BACK TO THE HILLSIDE, examining the dead Palestinian, when Dirk briefly emerged from the passageway in search of Sophie. Hearing someone else call Sophie’s name, the antiquities agent wheeled around in time to catch a glimpse of Dirk’s lantern disappearing back into the passageway. Sam once more pulled out his phone and tried calling Sophie, then crept slowly up the hill.
He was only a few yards from the quarry entrance when the cache of explosives detonated. From his vantage, it was little more than a muffled bang followed by a slight rumble beneath his feet. Seconds later, a plume of smoke and dust came pouring out of the small passageway.
He approached the entrance and found a discarded lantern in the bushes while waiting for the air to clear. Turning on the lamp, he stepped cautiously through the passageway. He was stunned as he stepped into the main cavern, shocked that a huge quarry existed unrecorded beneath the Temple Mount.
The air was still thick with smoke and dust, and Sam kept a sleeve to his nose as he surveyed the interior. He poked a head into each of the four tunnels, hesitating at the last one, which spewed a heavy plume, and then he suddenly heard the clattering sound of rock on rock echoing from within.
Proceeding slowly into the tunnel, he detected the glow of another light far down the corridor. Accelerating his pace, he encountered a pile of debris shaken from the walls by the blast. Stepping carefully past the rubble, he moved farther into the depths of the hillside. The dark tunnel straightened for several yards, and Sam could suddenly see the lantern burning brightly ahead.
A nervous sweat poured down his face as he coughed away the dust that caked his nasal passages. Making his way past a jagged boulder, he staggered out of the tunnel and into a large chamber illuminated by the lantern set on a fallen rock. The chamber resembled an underground gravel pit, with mounds of rocks piled on the floor throughout. A large, irregular hole had been eaten out of the ceiling just over the worst of the debris, the handiwork of the blast. A thick white haze still hung over everything, obscuring visibility despite the light.
From the opposite side of the chamber, Sam detected a faint movement.
“Sophie?” he called, reaching uneasily for the grip of his handgun.
Like an apparition, a figure appeared through the haze. With a brief sense of relief, Sam recognized Dirk emerging from the gloom. The relief faded when he saw that Dirk held the limp body of Sophie in his arms.
“Is she all right?” he asked quietly.
Sam tentatively stepped closer, observing that Dirk had covered her head and torso with a light jacket. It was then that he noticed Sophie’s dangling limbs appeared misshapen and coated with a thick layer of blood and dust.
He looked up at Dirk for an explanation and immediately shivered. Any hope for Sophie’s well-being was immediately extinguished by Dirk’s ragged appearance. Dirk stood staring at him with a battered and bloodied face, his eyes lost and soulless. The life seemed to be crushed out of him, and Sam knew at once that Sophie was dead.
50
T
HE EXPLOSION BENEATH THE HARAM ASH-SHARIF WAS nearly suppressed before the smoke even cleared. The Dome of the Rock had been Maria’s primary target, and it was there that she had planted the bulk of the explosives. But they went undetonated, rendered harmless when Dirk pulled out the blasting caps. It was a second, smaller cache, planted beneath the al-Aqsa Mosque, that did explode, though ultimately with minimal effect.
The ground beneath the eighth-century mosque shook and its windows rattled, but no fireballs erupted from the earth to consume it. Seconds before the explosives detonated, Sophie had removed a large block of them and tossed them down the tunnel before attempting to remove the fuzes in the remaining material. The diminished blast did little more than crack the foundation of a fountain behind the mosque. The Haram’s Palestinian caretakers initially took little note, believing the explosion came from another part of Jerusalem.
Inside the quarry, Sam Levine had been fast to act. Police and paramedics arrived quickly, treating Dirk while removing Sophie’s body to the morgue. Shin Bet security agents were equally prompt. The quarry was thoroughly searched, and the remaining explosives carefully secured and removed. The entire complex was then sealed off before the proprietors of Haram ash-Sharif even realized what had happened.
News of the attempted attack quickly spread through Jerusalem, creating an uproar. Local Muslims decried the assault, while the city’s Jews were horrified at the potential desecration of the Temple Mount. Each faction blamed the other, and tempers soared on all sides. Publicly defensive while privately tightening security around the city, the Israeli government quietly brought Jerusalem’s Muslim leaders to the quarry, where they jointly agreed to permanently barricade the site against future intrusion.
Anger in the street remained high, but outbursts were remarkably few, and violence was averted. Within days, the tensions abated, as no one stepped forward to claim responsibility for the attacks, while the real bombers disappeared without a trace.
51
G
ENERAL BRAXTON READ THE CIA REPORT WITHOUT uttering a word. Only a sporadic twitching of the National Intelligence Director’s mustache revealed a hint of emotion. Across his desk, intelligence officer O’Quinn and an Israeli CIA specialist sat silently staring at their shoes. They quickly sat upright when they observed Braxton remove a pair of granny-style reading glasses from the tip of his nose.
“So let me see here,” the general said in his gravelly voice. “Some nuts nearly blow up half of Jerusalem, and neither Mossad nor Shin Bet have a clue who did it? Is that the truth or is that just what the Israelis are telling us?”
“The Israelis clearly lack confidence in the investigation,” the CIA man replied. “They believe a Lebanese weapons- and drug-smuggling ring known as the Mules are at least partially responsible. The Mules have known ties to Hezbollah, so it’s possible they targeted Jerusalem in retaliation for Israel’s continued problems in Gaza. The American involved in the incident identified one of the bombers as being involved in a recent terrorist incident at an archaeological dig in Caesarea.”
“Is the American one of our agents?” Braxton asked.
“No, he’s a marine engineer with NUMA. He’s recovering from minor injuries at an Israeli Army hospital in Haifa.”
“A marine engineer? What in blazes was he doing in Jerusalem?”
“Apparently he was romantically involved with the antiquities agent who was killed in the blast. He happened to accompany her on a routine stakeout and got caught up in the fray. A good thing, it turned out, as he was the one who prevented the main cache of explosives from detonating beneath the Dome of the Rock.”
“Sir, we really dodged a bullet on that one,” O’Quinn said. “There were enough explosives there to easily level the entire Dome structure, let alone a good chunk of the Old City. It would have ignited regional animosity like nothing we’ve seen. I’m certain that missiles would be flying over Israel today had the shrine been taken out.”
Braxton grunted, boring his eyes into O’Quinn. “Since we’re on the topic of explosives, I see you have some unsavory homegrown connections to add to the mix.”
“We obtained a sample of the unexploded ordnance from the Israelis and confirmed in lab testing that it is in fact HMX. It was produced by a domestic manufacturer under contract with the U.S. Army,” O’Quinn reported soberly.
“It’s our own bloody explosives?” the general thundered.
“I’m afraid so. We’ve done some digging, and it appears that the Jerusalem sample matches up with a shipment of high-grade HMX that was secretly sold to Pakistan for use in their nuclear weapons program back in the early nineties. The Pakistanis have since confirmed that a container of HMX went missing a short time thereafter. Black market operatives in the military are believed to have sold it to buyers outside the country, but no evidence of its use has emerged until this year.”
“An entire container of HMX. Unbelievable,” Braxton said.
“The container would have housed approximately eight thousand pounds of the high explosive. It accounts for significant destructive power.”
The general closed his eyes and shook his head. “I presume this attack is connected to the other recent mosque bombings?” he asked without opening his eyes.
“We know that the al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo and the Yeşil Mosque in Bursa were both hit with HMX. In both cases, nobody claimed responsibility for the attacks. And no evidence was found linking the blasts to any local factions. We appear to have a similar set of circumstances in Jerusalem.”
“What of this dead Palestinian who was found in the graveyard?”
“He was a low-level artifact hunter with no known terrorist associations,” the CIA man responded. “He may have had some involvement with the discovery of the quarry, but he is not believed to have been a player in the actual attack.”
“Which takes us to the still unanswered questions of who and why.”
O’Quinn gave the general a pained look. “Nobody has claimed responsibility for any of the attacks, and I’m afraid we just don’t have a firm trail,” he said. “As Joe can verify, the intelligence agencies are looking at suspects across the board, from fringe Christian and Jewish sects to al-Qaeda and other Muslim fanatic groups. We’re reliant on the foreign intelligence agencies, and they don’t have any strong connections at this point.”
The CIA man nodded. “General, the targets have all been sites of theological importance in the Sunni Muslim world. We think there’s a strong possibility that the attacks are originating from a Shia source. The possible Hezbollah link in the Jerusalem attack furthers the theory. I have to tell you, there is a growing contingency within the agency that believes it’s the Iranians, trying to divert attention from their weapons program.”
“It’s a viable motivation,” Braxton agreed, “but they’d certainly be playing with fire if they got caught with dirty hands.”
O’Quinn quietly shook his head.
“I have to disagree, sir,” he said. “These bombings don’t have the earmark of the Iranians. It would certainly represent a new level of external extremism that we haven’t seen before.”
“You’re not giving me much else to go on, O’Quinn,” the general growled. “What about that Turk, Mufti Battal, that you were excited about?”
“He’s entered the presidential race, as we feared. He and his party would certainly benefit from any outrage in the fundamentalist community that these bombings may incite. It raises the point that these attacks may be linked to specific political goals rather than general terrorist tactics. As for Battal, we’re monitoring his activities closely, but we’ve yet to witness any pattern of coercive tactics so far. We certainly have no hard proof of a link, at this point.”
“So you’ve got nothing there. Perhaps the question you boys need to be thinking about is where they intend to strike next.”
“The targets have clearly been growing in significance,” O’Quinn said.
“And they’ve been denied in their latest outing, which ought to scare us all, in what they might be planning next.”
“The Kaaba in Mecca might be a possible target. I’ll see to it that the Saudis are advised to increase security,” O’Quinn said.
“We’ve got analysts working overtime on the matter,” the CIA man added. In the true Washington vernacular of helplessness, he added, “We’re doing everything we can.”
Braxton brushed off the comment with a glare. “Let me tell you what to do,” Braxton said, leaning forward over his desk while eyeballing both intelligence men with ire. “It’s really a simple exercise to put a stop to this. All you have to do,” he said, his voice rising to a fever pitch, “is find me the rest of those explosives!”
52
T
HE
OTTOMAN STAR
EASED INTO THE COVE NORTH OF the Dardanelles late in the afternoon, docking at the long pier that now stood empty. Beneath the adjacent rippled waters, the sunken workboat still sat on the sandy bottom, waiting for the shore crane and a dive crew to raise it from the depths.
Standing on the ship’s bridge, Maria was surprised to note her brother’s Jaguar parked on the dock. Celik watched as the ship approached the pier, then emerged from the Jaguar’s backseat as the mooring lines were secured. He briskly stepped down the quay with an attaché case tucked under his arm and boarded the ship.
“I wasn’t expecting you to meet me here, Ozden,” Maria said by way of a greeting.
“Time is short,” he replied, gazing about the bridge with an agitated expression. The captain and helmsman caught his drift and quickly stepped off the bridge, leaving Celik alone with his sister.
“I heard that the police searched the facilities after we departed,” Maria said. “Is it not dangerous for you to be here?”