Authors: Michael Byrnes
Two things let Enoch know he hadn’t been killed by the blast: the raging pain that shot through his left shoulder, and the frigid bite of the chest-deep water into which he’d plunged.
High overhead, the tunnel glowed orange through a thick haze of dust. On four sides, sheer block walls formed a huge rectangular pit set below a lofty barrel vault.
An ancient cistern.
When he looked around he could see that there were no doors, no stairs, no ladders. Once he’d slogged to the nearest wall, his fingers confirmed that the surface was impossibly slick. The opening to the tunnel was a good five meters up. There’d be no climbing out of this hole.
His teeth were chattering uncontrollably, his body vacillating in the stinging water.
“Hey!” Enoch yelled up through cupped hands. “Down here!” He repeated a similar SOS multiple times over the next minute.
No response.
There was a good chance he’d pass out from hypothermia before the soldiers would hear his screams and pull him out.
Above, the flickering fire glow taunted.
Unexpectedly, something bumped up against his leg, making him flinch. When he looked down he simultaneously gasped and pushed back in repulsion.
A grisly corpse floated face-up. And there wasn’t much face to talk about. The front side of the skull had been reduced to pulp—one eye swollen shut, the other stripped of its fleshy lids so that a single hazy green eye stared up at him. Even the lips had been violently peeled back so that the dead man’s few remaining jagged teeth seemed to grimace.
He stretched his leg up high and kicked it away. The corpse went bobbing along a smooth wave to the cistern’s opposing wall, leaving a rippling wake in its path.
“Disgusting.”
The orange glow reflected over the top of the water. But along the wall directly below where he’d fallen from the tunnel, a different light caught Enoch’s eye—an ever-so-faint outline below the crystal-clear waterline.
Plowing his way through the water, he dipped his hands below the surface to examine the wall. The stones fell away under his fingertips. His numb digits had a tough time transmitting texture, but he had no problem determining that there was an opening there—and it was wide.
A passage? Maybe. But why the light? Had the explosion blown a hole this deep?
Couldn’t be. The light wasn’t orange. It looked more as if someone was shining a flashlight from deep within—a warm, yellowish light.
So the next question was, just how far in was the light source?
The trembling was getting worse by the second. Still no activity overhead.
He screamed for help several more times, to no avail. Then he came to the desperate realization that the underwater passage was his only hope.
It took a good thirty seconds for him to get up the nerve to immerse himself. But that’s what he did.
The water felt like needles against his eyes as he assessed the channel— maybe a meter in height, same in width. It ran straight for about eight meters, then took a slight bend where the light shone brightest. Since the ancients hand-carved these things, there was enough room to pass through them. But what lay beyond?
He sprang his head up from the water, his entire body tight.
Here goes nothing.
He pulled off his sneakers and socks, then stripped off the heavy Kevlar vest riddled with shrapnel that would have otherwise minced his chest. Filling his lungs to the limit, he dropped back below the water and kicked his way through the opening. A combination of foot-flipping and hand-grappling the smooth walls propelled him forward at a healthy clip. But if the light source wasn’t indicating a way out, he’d never be able to reverse course without first running out of oxygen.
This was a one-way trip. And it terrified him.
Up ahead, the passage got tight—
really
tight.
Now his eyes felt like glass on the verge of shattering.
The constricted bend came up quickly. He was forced to squirm through it sideways.
The light instantly brightened so that he could see its source up ahead, another ten meters or so away. With his limbs offering little response, he gave it everything he had, kicking off the stone wall for one final forward thrust.
Now he could actually make out the shimmering surface of the water. If the light was dropping down some kind of vertical shaft, like a well, he thought, he might have an opportunity to draw more air. But if he wasn’t able to climb it . . .
Two meters.
“Gaaah!”
he screamed as his head broke through the surface of the water. He gasped for air. But he needed to hold his eyes shut and rub them for a minute before he could see where fate had delivered him.
When his eyes finally began to adjust and the blur gave way to discernible dimensions, he liked what he could make out so far. The water tunnel hadn’t ended in a vertical shaft. It actually continued up a sharp rise.
The light was very bright now, about four meters up the grade. On his elbows, Enoch began dragging himself up and out of the water until his slightly bent knees could be of assistance. As he crept higher, his vision became crisper, so that now he could make out the substantial metal grate that blocked his exit.
Cohen and his men anxiously waited for the gunfire inside the shrine to cease. When it finally did, only two of the six who’d stormed the building emerged, and one of them was bleeding profusely from a wound to the thigh.
It was then that the rabbi first heard the sounds coming from the east.
Gazing up into the night sky, he could see lights approaching, the whop
ping of rotor blades echoing through the valley.
“Quickly!” he instructed.
One of the men went ahead and found the lights.
At the shrine’s door, the rabbi paused to study what lay beyond. He’d heard much about the exquisite Arabian décor inside the Dome of the Rock. On one occasion, he’d even happened upon some pictures of its interior. But all that did little justice to its true magnificence. Punishing himself for this unwilling admiration—this evil enticement—he cast his eyes straight ahead to the open area that sat directly beneath the cupola. He proceeded into the ambulatory.
If it wasn’t the first step, it was the second when his senses immediately registered an overpowering presence here. It was as if he felt a supernatural aura wrapping around him. Faltering midstride, he struggled to conceal his alarm. He froze. But as quickly as it had come, the sensation dissipated.
Something atmospheric, perhaps?
he tried to convince himself.
Calm yourself. Let God guide you.
Cautiously, the rabbi—the high priest, the
kohen gadol,
he reminded himself—eased deeper into the shrine. Cutting a straight line across the ambulatory’s rich red Persian carpeting, he ignored the two dead Muslims who had been pulled off to the side and gave a reverential glance at his brave men who’d fallen close to the entrance.
The Ark was paraded in behind him, followed by the men handling Charlotte and the surviving two gunmen.
“Close the doors!” Cohen ordered.
He stopped along the ornate railing bordering the Foundation Stone. The emotions that came over him were overwhelming as he laid eyes upon the most sanctified ground on Earth.
Here God had made Adam and all creation. Here was the exact spot Abraham had come to sacrifice Isaac. And here, as told in Genesis 28, God promised Jacob the land of Israel . . .
A stairway was set on the ground with its top reaching heaven, and God’s angels were going up and down it. The Lord was standing there above it, say
ing, “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your offspring the land that you are now sleeping on. Your offspring will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out toward the west, the east, the north, and the south. All the peoples on earth will be blessed
through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wher
ever you go. I will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I
have done what I have promised you.
When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he said, “Surely the Lord is in this place,
and I did not know it.” He was afraid and said, “What an awesome place this
is! This is none other than the house of God. This is the gate of Heaven.”
Now his legs could barely keep him standing, and the rabbi struggled desperately to overcome his elation. Upon this rock the Holy of Holies had been erected by King Solomon’s masons for one purpose: to permanently house the Ark of the Covenant. And now it would stand here again.
The gate of heaven would open once more.
At the top of the water passage, Enoch turned onto his back and grabbed at the grate with his shaky blue fingers. Then he gave the thing a good shove.
Nothing happened.
He fought the desperation.
It’s not like they used screws in the old days,
he reminded himself. It simply had to be rusted or stuck.
Another shove. Then some intense pounding with fists. The warm air blowing down from above was making his thawing skin itchy.
Come on! Damn it!
He wasn’t about to go back into that cistern.
Grunting, he tried a bench-press motion—steady, even pressure.
Something on the right side let out a gritty
snap
and the grate popped up lopsidedly.
“Hah!” Enoch jubilantly yelled out.
The rest of the job was much easier as he bent back the rusty hinges on the grate’s opposite side.
One threat gone, another taking its place.
He remained perfectly still and listened. Nothing.
Cautiously, Enoch poked his head up from the hole, praying that a bullet wouldn’t split his noggin. That’s when he saw that he was in a long tunnel that was easily wide enough to drive a truck through.
Enoch felt completely disoriented as he pulled himself up and out of the hole.
In one direction, the overhead string of work lights led far off to what appeared to be a dead end. There were seven or eight bodies intermittently strewn along the passage in thick puddles of blood. But behind him, only a few meters back, was the flaming rubble where the Western Wall Tunnel had collapsed.
That’s when it hit him.
Cohen had dug his way beneath the Temple Mount to access this an
cient tunnel. And the water passage Enoch had just crawled up had most likely been intended as one of its sewer drains.
It didn’t take a map for Enoch to realize that this tunnel made a beeline beneath the Dome of the Rock. “M-m-my G-G-God,” he said with trembling lips, teeth clicking like a keyboard.
The air was cool, but it was a huge improvement over the water. And from the far end of the passage, a subtle breeze was wafting over his dripping face.
Keep moving.
He began with a fast, sloppy trot that forced blood back to his legs. Then he quickened the pace, his bare feet slapping rhythmically along the ancient paving stones. As he passed the downed men wearing blue jumpsuits, he snatched up three abandoned machine guns to replace his waterlogged Jericho.
Within two minutes, he’d reached the spot where the breeze was blowing strongest—a staircase leading up to a swath of night sky.
Charlotte watched the robed priests set down the box dead center on the huge, flat stone that was the shrine’s focal point. The carrying poles were slid out from the box’s corner loops and set aside. While they stripped off the animal furs laid over its blue veil, Cohen stood close to them, praying intently. When only the blue shroud remained—the final protective layer—the Ark’s sharp contours and double-humped lid were more pronounced.
Cohen stretched his hands to heaven and pronounced Isaiah’s prophecy: “ ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.’ ”
Four priests surrounded the Ark, each claiming a corner of the shroud. They took much care not to come into contact with what lay beneath it. With hands outstretched, Cohen signaled for them to proceed. Pulling the sides up and drawing the shroud tight, the priests raised it up, then shuffled sideways until the overhead lights splashed over the gleaming gold lid.
“The Ark of the Covenant, Charlotte. Behold the world’s most coveted relic, the vessel of God’s essence.”
Charlotte’s mix of grief and rage was temporarily trumped by intrigue. What little she knew about the Ark of the Covenant began cycling through her thoughts—tales of an all-powerful weapon that directly channeled God’s wrath. An ancient lockbox for Moses’s Ten Commandments. Of course, there was also Charlton Heston and that whole Indiana Jones thing.
Nonetheless, the box’s beauty was awe inspiring—even more impressive than Spielberg’s best-guess Hollywood mock-up. The workmanship was incredible, particularly the fine detail that went into the unfolded feathered wings of the lid’s two lifelike angel figurines, which knelt with heads bowed. All the box’s edges were covered with ornate braiding. Could it really be the fabled Ark of the Covenant? That could certainly help to explain the strange energy coursing through the thing.
“I thought the Ark was lost,” Charlotte said.
“Only in the movies and in legends,” Cohen said. “Never lost, but hidden for a very, very long time.”
“By who?”
He smiled. “Me, my father, my grandfather—my ancestors. An unbroken chain of men who were the custodians of the Lord’s covenant.”
Studying him for a moment, she could see that he was serious—dead serious. “So why bring it out now? You’re just going to leave it here? In a Muslim shrine?”