The Sacred Cipher (39 page)

Five sets of eyes were on the road ahead. None of them saw the dark shadow closing
fast from behind.

Rasaf had placed his men on the hill. He had chosen wisely. He had good sight lines
in many directions, overseeing the 3095.

Noise like firecrackers. Thuds against the steel gate on the back of the SUV. Headlights
burning to life just behind them. Sensory overload for the flash of a second. Then
he knew they were being fired upon. Bohannon floored the SUV as it climbed the crest
of a hill, then almost lost control as the road on the other side fell away to the
right.

The pilot realized that he didn’t know the guy’s name. “Ground,” he snapped, “we have
hostile fire on the target vehicle. Say again, hostile fire on the target vehicle.”

A momentary pause, then the voice came back. “What?”

“Now,” Yazeer yelled into the night, the Uzi in his hands ripping into the Toyota’s
rear gate. “Now, close it off.”

Hanging on for life and praying for deliverance, Bohannon saw two cars emerge, one
on each side of the road, and form a roadblock at the bottom of the hill. Men got
out, pointing something at them. “Oh, God!” blurted Rodriguez.

“Now,” said Rasaf.

“Mahamoud, why are we shooting rockets at the SUV?” Yazeer screamed from the window.
For the shortest instant, Mahamoud turned to the voice. And saw the trail of light
coming toward them.

Nolan, Rizzo, and Johnson were on the floor in the back, Rodriguez was holding on
to any handle he could find, and Bohannon was looking for a way out when it whooshed
past the Toyota’s right side and homed in on the cars in the middle of the road. A
blinding flash of light.

“Ground! Ground! Acknowledge. There is rocket fire. I don’t know who’s shooting at
who. Two cars formed a roadblock ahead of the SUV, but they’ve been blown away by
an RPG round . . . God, there’s another RPG. It just took out the pursuing vehicle.
Rocket fire is coming from the hill to the west. Target vehicle is—Oh, no. My fuel
alarms are going off. You’re on your own, ground. Shalom.”

“Understood,” said the voice—not very convincingly.

“Floor it,” yelled Rodriguez at the top of his voice, swamped by flashbacks from his
youth in the Bronx. “Floor it. Don’t you dare slow down. Bust right through them.”

The two squads of Shin Bet troopers pulled up to the carnage on the 3095, each Hummer
cautiously closing in on one of the burning heaps of metal. Two troopers, now on foot
after being dropped off, closed in on the hill from the other side.

They didn’t find much. Charred bodies in the mangled wreckage, RPG casings on the
hill sitting beside flattened grass in the shapes of bodies. Few answers for all their
questions, no sign of the black Toyota SUV, and no helicopter to track it down.