Serpent of Moses
Authors: Don Hoesel
Tags: #FIC026000, #Secret societies—Fiction, #Archaeology teachers—Fiction, #FIC042060, #Moses (Biblical leader)—Fiction, #FIC042000, #Relics—Fiction, #Christian antiquities—Fiction
© 2012 by Don Hoesel
Published by Bethany House Publishers 11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
Bethany House Publishers is a division of Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-7109-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by John Hamilton Design Author is represented by Leslie H. Stobbe
For Dawn
The jeep slowed and pulled off the highway, the suspension struggling to settle the vehicle onto the narrower road that wound a barely discernible path through the hills. The night-vision binoculars in the hands of the Libyan rendered the details of the jeep with perfect clarity despite the fact that it was running with lights out. The absence of headlights suggested the man driving—the only one of the group Boufayed’s team had not been able to identify—was a local who knew the terrain surrounding Tripoli well enough to navigate in the dark.
The Libyan watched as the jeep worked its way up a steep hill and then as it disappeared over the edge. Only then did he lower the binoculars and bring a phone to his ear. He said a single word before turning his eyes back down the highway, waiting for the dark SUV that had trailed the jeep from afar. It took almost half a minute before the truck came into sight and, on reaching the turnoff, pulled onto the dirt road and made the same climb as the vehicle that had preceded it. When it too disappeared, Boufayed again raised the phone.
“They are no good to us dead. Remember that,” he said to the man who answered, a man who acknowledged the directive and communicated it to the others with him.
As Boufayed ended the call he looked up into the evening sky, searching for any sign of the helicopter, but he could not find it nor hear any sound of its presence.
After he slipped the phone into a pocket he remained at the top of the ridge for another moment, regarding the spot where he had lost sight of the jeep, before turning away and walking down to the waiting car. He slipped into the back of the dark sedan, and the driver started off as soon as the door was closed.
“Do we have any information on the driver yet?” Boufayed asked.
“It just came in,” the other man said. “He is a local courier. No apparent foreign connections.” The man looked up and caught Boufayed’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “It is doubtful he knows anything about his passengers.”
Boufayed grunted. “Which means he will be dead as soon as he has taken them where they want to go.”
The driver did not answer but returned his eyes to the road, leaving Boufayed to again ponder the presence of the Mossad so near the capital. He thought the Israelis had been foolish to try to send them in by plane—even a small one. They had been spotted before they were ten miles past the border. It spoke of sloppiness and Boufayed was not accustomed to such from the Israelis. Nor was he used to foreign agents ferrying lettered German historians into the country.
When the car reached the highway the driver pulled onto it and aimed for the same road down which their quarry and the tail had disappeared. Boufayed looked at his watch and saw that the current time was within the acceptable engagement window, which meant that things would likely be concluded by the time he arrived.
It took the driver some time to force the sedan onto a road not meant for a vehicle of its type, but soon it was bouncing up the hill, Boufayed bracing himself with a hand on the roof in order to keep from leaving his seat. When they reached the top of the hill, all the Libyan could see was sky until the car shifted to level and then into a decline. And what Boufayed saw with that change in perspective brought a vehement curse uttered quietly enough that it was doubtful the driver heard it pass his lips.
The helicopter he had not been able to spot from the ridge was on the ground, its rotors still spinning. It had come down in the jeep’s path, and the SUV had pulled in behind, pinning the Israelis and their passenger between two groups of heavily armed men. Boufayed saw the problem immediately: the helicopter had landed too close. The lack of a buffer zone did all but ensure a fight.
By the time the driver had brought the sedan to a stop within yards of the SUV, the firefight was in full force. Boufayed exited the car in time to see one of the men in the jeep slump forward. It was the driver, who likely only realized that his passengers were anything other than his standard low-profile fares when a military helicopter landed on the road in front of him.
One of the others had jumped from the jeep, strafing the soldiers pouring out of the helicopter. But he was cut down before he’d traveled more than a few feet. That left the two men who occupied the back seat of the jeep, and Boufayed knew that despite the orders he shouted into the phone, those men would be dead in moments. A lone man stood no chance of stopping what had been loosed.
Even so, Boufayed began to move toward the jeep, his black shoes kicking up dust as he scrambled down the incline and into the line of fire. They had to take the German alive, and he considered that directive important enough to ignore the bullets that filled the air around him. As he ran Boufayed reached beneath his coat and pulled his gun.
It seemed to take a long while for him to cross the empty space between the vehicles, and with each step he waited for the inevitable, for a handful of the many rounds to find the two men who still remained in the back of the jeep. But with each step that saw the foreigners still alive, and with the growing realization among his men that Boufayed had entered the kill zone, the Libyan was beginning to hope that he might secure his prize after all.
He was within steps of the jeep, the reports of gunfire dying off, when he saw the remaining Mossad agent lurch back against the seat. It seemed to happen in slow motion with the blood beginning to flow from the man’s chest. Still, the Israeli had not dropped his gun, and even as the Libyan rounds faded, Boufayed held his weapon steady on the foreign soldier. The blood came more quickly now, welling from the man’s chest—too much for the wound to be anything but mortal.
With the Israeli dying, Boufayed turned his eyes to the only other survivor: the German, who wore a look that Boufayed could only identify as incredulity. The man’s focus appeared to move everywhere yet seemed unable to focus on anything—until Boufayed drew near, and then the German’s eyes fell on him. It was only in that moment that the Libyan allowed himself to believe he had captured his prize. He would handle the man’s interrogation himself. The German would give up his secrets; he would divulge all that he knew. Boufayed would see to it.
The night air had dropped several degrees since Boufayed stood on the ridgetop watching the jeep pull off the highway, and he felt it for the first time, the crispness on his skin. It improved a mood already enhanced by the success of the mission. As he started across the last few feet separating him from Dr. Felix Hoffstratter, he found himself wearing a smile likely unsuited to the moment.
He did not register the movement right away—a shifting of position by the dying Israeli, a last flailing against the finality of what awaited him. The German himself did not seem to notice, as the man’s eyes remained fixed on the approaching Libyan. A second series of movements, though, pulled Boufayed’s focus away from his prize. The Mossad agent had pushed himself upright. His shirt was soaked through with blood. Boufayed could see his chest heaving as he fought to draw breath. His face, however, had taken on a look of resolve.
The Israeli looked at Boufayed, and the Libyan thought he saw a hint of a smile touch the man’s lips. Then Boufayed saw the gun hand come up. Before he could react, the Israeli twisted in his seat and placed the gun against the German’s temple. An instant later, a single shot scattered whatever secrets the man held.
Two Weeks Later
After the wall in front of him exploded, Jack had a single moment to consider the one thing more frightening than the fact that people were shooting at him. It was that, if by some chance he happened to get out of the tunnel alive, Esperanza was going to kill him. Then the thought was gone, fractured by the pulverized rock that cut into the skin of his face and neck.
His eyes snapped shut against the rain of debris, causing him to slow involuntarily despite the urgency of his flight. Momentum, though, served to carry him around the curve of the tunnel and out of the immediate line of fire, where he used the flashlight in his shaking hand to find the uneven rock wall that traveled farther into the darkness than the meager light could penetrate.
An hour ago, on the way in, as he picked his way over the sloping terrain, he’d had time to choose his course with care, to ascertain the irregularities of the path and decide where to place each step in order to disperse the pain in his ankle. Now, as he scrambled to keep in front of his pursuers, he felt each step in sharp stabs that ran between ankle and knee. He’d injured the ankle during his journey in, which meant he stood no chance of avoiding further damage with caution thrown to the wind.
Jack stopped for a moment to catch his breath. He could hear voices behind him—closer than he liked—and knew his chances of staying in front of those voices for the mile that separated him from the cave exit were slim. As he started off again, the beam from the flashlight played over the ground, illuminating the multiple pairs of boot prints he’d followed deeper into the tunnel. He’d found himself irritated at the boot prints an hour ago, and not just because their existence signified the presence of other people interested in what he himself had come here for. Rather, his annoyance had come from the fact that they upset the illusion—that they robbed him of the opportunity to convince himself that his were the first feet to pass over this ancient ground in a thousand years. Cultivating that belief, false though it might be, went a long way toward stroking the ego of any respectable archaeologist. In Jack’s current predicament, though, he found himself wishing he’d allowed the existence of those prints to dissuade him from entering the cave at all.
He raised the light and shook his head as the far edge of the beam tapered away without finding a wall. That indicated a long stretch of straight tunnel that would expose his back once his pursuers rounded the corner behind him. Forcing more speed into his legs, he sent his mind scrambling for anything that would increase his chances of reaching the open air of Jebel Akhdar, and the only thing that presented itself was the fork in the tunnel that served as the sole split from the main passage he’d followed in. Jack hadn’t explored that rabbit hole, as the map now crumpled into a ball in his jacket pocket had kept him on the wider path. Consequently he had no idea where it went or if it provided a way out of the labyrinth that cut through the mountain. But beyond the split Jack’s memory provided an image of a quarter mile of ramrod-straight rock that he knew he’d never be able to traverse before they caught him. So the fork was his only chance.
Even as he settled on that goal, he noticed the light behind him was growing stronger, which meant he was about to lose the angle that had provided him some measure of protection from the rounds that had followed him from the treasure room’s antechamber. He couldn’t run any faster; his breath came in ragged gasps that over time had settled into a rhythm matching the sound of his side bag slapping against his thigh. All he could think to do was to swing his pack around so that it covered the small of his back, then crouch as much as he was able without sacrificing speed. A moment later he heard the advance squad of a renewed volley.
As he cringed against an anticipated hit, and as the bullets struck the rock on either side of him, the small part of his brain that wasn’t dedicated to survival picked out a single voice amid the other sounds and, if he wasn’t imagining things, it sounded as if the voice’s owner was imploring his companions to stop shooting. Unfortunately the command had no effect on whoever held the guns.
In front of Jack, the beam of light bounced along, giving him just enough information to keep him from running into a wall. And on one of its upward swings he saw, about forty yards ahead, the spot where the tunnel widened to accommodate the second branch. Before he could find any hope in that realization, one of the many bullets that had tracked him for the last half mile nearly found its mark, bisecting the sliver of space between his ribs and right bicep and leaving on the latter a tangible and painful reminder of its passing.
The distraction pulled his attention away from the uneven tunnel floor, and his foot slipped into one of the many depressions that marked its surface, robbing him of balance and sending him hard into the tunnel wall. He recovered quickly, losing only a few seconds, but the incident cautioned him against presuming safety just because he could see his objective. The growing pain in his upper arm suggested that an intact arrival at the second tunnel entrance was far from guaranteed.
With that thought Jack took one last look down the tunnel, fixing the details of it in his mind. He then switched off the flashlight and flooded his way out with darkness. That done, the fleeing archaeologist straightened and poured all of his remaining energy into running faster, bringing his knees up to minimize contact with anything that could trip him up. He stretched out his left hand, finding the tunnel wall and using its light brush against his fingers to keep him centered. But despite that passing solidness there was something almost terrifying in hurtling without reservation into darkness.
Still, he pushed those thoughts aside and ran on, counting his strides. When he reached thirty he suspected he was close. Sure enough, the cold rock disappeared from under his hand. He brought himself to a halt, feeling a moment’s panic at the loss of the one thing that gave him some assurance that he would not run headlong into solid rock. He turned and backtracked the few steps to where the tunnel wall ended, then saw the diffused light from other flashlights coming up the tunnel. He knew it wouldn’t take long for that light to find him, although he was thankful that his engineered blackout seemed to have temporarily halted the gunfire.
His own light still doused, Jack stepped to his right, losing sight of the approaching illumination and feeling along the rock until he found the place where it curved into the secondary tunnel. Earlier, on his way to the treasure room, as he’d passed by and briefly shined the light down the smaller passageway, he’d heard a trickle that suggested running water but hadn’t seen anything. He heard it again as he started in. If his memory was accurate the tunnel took a sharp right curve several yards in, but he couldn’t swear to that. So when he began his advance down the unexplored passage, it was with considerably greater care than he’d shown in exiting the last one.
Hugging the wall, he worked to put distance between himself and his pursuers. He doubted the ruse would provide complete freedom from pursuit, but even if it forced the other party to split up, sending one group toward the exit and another down the branch Jack had chosen, he would consider it a victory.
In the smaller tunnel the silence that normally pervaded the whole of the place beneath the mountain seemed to take on added weight, as if it were a physical thing—silent except for the sound of the water, growing louder now. In less than a minute he’d reached the spot where the corridor began its turn, and in the next few steps the sound of the water increased even more. He fielded an urge to use the flashlight to get a feel for what waited for him, yet he doubted he’d put sufficient distance between himself and the small chamber where the tunnels met for the light to go unnoticed.
Releasing a sigh, Jack started off again and it wasn’t long before he noticed a change in the feel of the wall beneath his hand. It took a few seconds for him to realize that the soft, damp skin covering the rock was moss. It was while he was processing that fact that his foot came down in several inches of water that traveled over his shoe, drenching his sock.
He thought a curse, but stifled it before it could pass his lips. Pulling his foot from the water he took a step back and, after weighing the danger of doing so, he chanced the use of the flashlight. With his hand over the lens Jack allowed only a sliver of the beam to escape, just enough to show him what lay ahead.
Taken aback by what he saw, his hand fell away from the front of the flashlight, allowing its full strength to fill the chamber. He stood there motionless, studied the wall that marked the end of the tunnel. To his practiced eye the barrier gave every impression of having been an abandoned project, as if ancient excavators had given up once water started to trickle from the rock lest they loose the trapped reservoir behind it. Over time, though, the water had worked its way through the stone, creating several larger cracks that sent the water down the wall, where it created the stream that pooled at Jack’s feet before following a gentle slope that kept the water emptying through a fissure in the ground.
It was an escape route Jack could not take. To make matters worse, the only other way out would now be blocked. It was also possible that they had sent some of their number after him.
Jack stared at the wall for a few more moments, until he heard noises behind him that had nothing to do with running water. Turning away from the wall, he dropped to a knee and swung his pack from his shoulder. Experience had taught him that when fate removed one option, a man had to move quickly to the next one. He unzipped the pack and pulled out the one item in it that lacked any connection to the practice of archaeology.
He held the gun up, bringing it into the light. For most of his professional life he’d never traveled with a gun, and even now he didn’t like keeping one near. Esperanza hated it, even if she understood why he sometimes chose to take it along when he traveled. However, he hadn’t fired one since Australia.
The sounds of his pursuers grew more pronounced; he knew they would have seen the glow of his light.
Jack moved to his left, putting his shoulder against the rock, and then turned off the flashlight. It took several blinks and a handful of seconds before he could see the approaching illumination displacing the darkness that surrounded him. He raised the gun and waited.
It didn’t take long.
When the first of them appeared, stepping clear of the curving wall, Jack sighted on the flashlight in the man’s hand. Just as the light began to turn in his direction he started to squeeze off a shot. At the last moment, though, he shifted and put the bullet into the wall a few feet to the side of the shadowy form.
With the time that had passed since the last time he’d fired a gun, Jack almost lost his grip on the weapon. The man he’d shot toward dropped the flashlight in his scramble to get out of the line of fire. Jack smiled in grim satisfaction and settled back to wait for whatever would play out next. He kept the gun raised, but no one else stepped out and he suspected the men who had chased him to this point were debating the merits of making themselves targets for a desperate archaeologist entrenched in a defensible position.
Several minutes passed in that fashion, and every so often Jack thought he heard voices over the sound of the water. However, when the minutes began to stretch out without any activity, he began to grow irritated at the delay. He was about to call out when a voice came from down the tunnel.
“So what happens now?”
The man had an accent—English, Jack thought.
“What happens is that I shoot anyone who steps around that corner,” Jack called back, channeling as much confidence as he could.
The immediate response was a chuckle that Jack barely caught.
“Your last shot missed by a considerable margin,” the other man said, humor in his voice. “You’re either a horrible shot, in which case we might just try our luck and come in after you, or you don’t have it in you to kill someone.”
“That first one was a warning,” Jack answered. “I won’t miss a second time.”
“Assuming I believe that,” the Englishman said, “how do you think you’re going to get out of here?”
Jack did not have a ready answer to that question. After a pause he shrugged and said, “I haven’t quite figured that part out yet.”
“And while you figure it out, all we have to do is wait. We have the benefit of being able to restock once our supplies run out, so we can simply set up camp here until you starve.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Jack said. “Unless you have a pass from the Libyan government, which I’m guessing isn’t the case, then you’re in the middle of an illegal antiquities operation. Are you really going to wait around and hope the local authorities don’t stumble in here while you’re waiting for me to die?”
There was no response to his question.
“You know, I didn’t even get what I was after,” Jack went on. “So, to be honest, I’m not sure why you’re concerned with me anyway. The staff is still back there.”