The tribe consisted of thirty-three souls. Twelve women, seven children— eight if you counted the one with child—and fourteen monks. Only seven of the monks had taken the vow of celibacy, but they had all made simple vows unique to the tribe that no less committed them than any vow taken anywhere by any monk. In fifty years they had never been less than fifteen and never more than thirty-four. The harsh reality of the desert played more than a small role in their numbers.
Like most people who depended on the desert for survival, they were a nomadic tribe, rarely staying more than two weeks in any camp. But the Oasis of the Towers was one such camp, and they had stayed a long three weeks before the Father had suggested it was time to move on.
The oasis wasn’t much more than a brown puddle to the east of the towers. The rock formation shielded the hole and the camp from the afternoon sun. There were only three commonly known springs in the Danakil, eight if you really knew, and twelve if you knew how to wring water from a rock. Fortunately the tribe had a few “rock-wringers.” But only the spring at the Tower Oasis remained wet year around. Not wet enough to support more than two spiny trees and not wet enough to wash down your camels, but wet. Enough to filter the soupy, brown water for drinking, at least.
The tents were already loaded and the water jars filled. They would leave at sunset as always. Within the half-hour.
Three of the children ran circles around Mustaf, the oldest and, without argument, the most ornery of their fifteen camels. Mustaf objected loudly and bared his lips, turning clumsily and spitting at the children, which only perpetuated the game. As was to be expected, Daniel led the charge, skipping like a jackal, edging the old camel close to its limits.
Two of the women were sweeping the salt, clearing marks of their stay as a courtesy more to themselves than to any other visitor. In all likelihood the next visitor would in fact be the tribe, three months from now. Excepting Mustaf, the last of the camels were already strung together in a long train for the journey.
It was then, just after Brother Elijah had told Daniel to leave the camel alone, that Miriam’s cry cut through the air and stopped them all in their tracks.
“Brother Elijah! Brother Elijah, come quickly!”
After a momentary pause, a dozen of the tribe ran towards her. She waved to them urgently. “Hurry!”
“What is it?” Elijah demanded. Little Daniel was on his heels with the other children, and behind them Brother Isaac and two of the women.
Without answering, Miriam spun and walked around the tower.
Brother Elijah drew abreast. “What is it?”
“A man.”
“A man? You haven’t seen a man before?”
“Please, Elijah. This isn’t the time to play around.” The rest had caught up and trailed her, some snickering at the exchange. The tribe wasn’t easily excitable, but they were easily amused.
“When you see, you won’t be laughing,” Miriam said. She turned and ran through a group of boulders to the west side of the tower.
The man lay on his face, unmoved from where Miriam had stumbled upon him. She slowed and walked around the body. A hush enveloped the others. They formed a rough circle around the body.
“Who is he?” Daniel asked.
No one answered. The man was dressed in western clothes—khaki slacks and a white shirt, the latter stained by sweat, the former by blood. His sandals were embedded in blistered feet. Flies buzzed around the glistening flesh, feeding on the blood. None of this was so uncommon in the desert.
The color of the man’s skin was. It was tan, not black. This man wasn’t from the desert.
“He’s a white man,” Daniel said, undeterred by the silence.
“Hush, Daniel,” his older sister, Ruth, said.
“I was doing a sweep for garbage and found him here,” Miriam said. The man’s back rose and fell in gentle undulations. Dark hair concealed his face, which was planted in the sand.
They stood looking down at the strange sight together. It seemed to have frozen them into inaction. And then suddenly they were all moving. Brother Isaac knelt by the feet and began to pull up the man’s pant legs.
“Give me water,” Elijah said, taking a bottle from one of the women. Miriam dropped to her knees and pulled matted hair from the man’s face. “We have to turn him over onto his back.”
The children crowded for a better look, and Ruth shooed them back. “Give them room. This isn’t a painting to gawk at. This is a man who is dying.”
“It’s okay, Ruth,” Isaac said gently, placing his hands under the man’s legs. “Let them look. It won’t harm them.”
Together, Isaac, Elijah, and Miriam eased the body over onto its back. If the man felt any pain, he didn’t show it. He was unconscious.
Miriam placed her hand under the man’s shirt. “His body temperature’s too high.” She ripped the shirt open, and Elijah poured his water on the chest. They worked as a team familiar with the task set before them. They had to reduce the body temperature as quickly as possible.
“Water,” Miriam said, blindly reaching her hand to the others like a surgeon asking for a scalpel. A bottle filled it. She uncorked it with her teeth and spilled a thin trail onto the man’s cracked lips. Then onto his forehead and cheeks. She emptied it over his neck and hair. Beneath the blisters the skin was smooth; he was a handsome man with a finely shaped face.
Miriam took another bottle of water, gently pried his lips apart, and dribbled the cool liquid into his mouth. The water seeped past white teeth.
Isaac had removed the man’s sandals. “It’s not as bad as it looks, but we have to get some salve on these blisters.”
“We can’t move him until he responds,” Miriam said.
“Yes. Daniel, fetch the stretcher, please. Ruth, please tell the Father that we have a guest. He will know what to do.”
They ran off, Ruth chiding her younger brother for always having to be the man of the hour.
The stranger first responded ten minutes later—a gentle swallow—and a satisfied murmur swept through the onlookers. Within minutes the man was moaning, and his temperature had fallen to reasonable levels. Brother Isaac had covered his feet in a thick layer of salve, then wrapped them in white linens.
The Father had instructed Ruth to take binoculars and climb the highest rock to look out to the west. She was clambering up the boulders now, proudly announcing her mission to the rest.
“We are taking him with us? Or are we staying?” Miriam asked Brother Isaac. It was not their way to leave a man in need.
“I should think we will stay,” he said. “But that will be up to the Father. Either way this man isn’t going to walk around on his own tonight. Help me put him—”
“There’s more!” Ruth suddenly yelled down from her perch. “There are more coming!”
Miriam jumped up and gazed out at the red sunset. “More? You mean more travelers?” She could see nothing but flat salt.
“Yes, more! Two on camels, I think. No wait . . . three! Another further behind!” She spun down towards them. “Three!”
“What did the Father say?” Isaac demanded.
“That if there were more coming we should leave immediately!” Ruth was already scrambling down from the rocks.
Isaac grabbed the stretcher and rolled it out next to the man. “Well, now we know. Let’s go.”
Isaac and Elijah lifted the limp man onto the stretcher, grabbed the poles on either end, and hurried for the caravan. If the Father had insisted they leave, it could only mean that the approaching travelers posed a threat. Obviously the Father knew something they did not.
Miriam insisted that she be the one to stay by the man until he recovered. Brother Isaac raised a brow, but no one objected. The process of attaching the makeshift bed to her camel took no more than five minutes. The stretcher angled to the earth and would slide like a sled. If the ground wasn’t so even, the ride might be rough, but the desert was as flat as marble here.
With a final sweep of the camp the caravan left the Tower Oasis, dragging their newest member behind. They left a trail, of course—two lines in the sand left by the stretcher, leading due north.
Ismael first caught sight of the two camels one hour before sunset, and the sight had him off the horse immediately. He brought the glasses up and peered at the distant animals edging away. They were headed for the tall rocks on the horizon.
Ordinarily he might have used the speed of his mount to flank them and take a position in the rocks before them. A horse could outrun a camel any day.
Unless the horse was an old dehydrated mare, wheezing with each step. Ismael wasn’t sure the horse would make the rocks at a walk, much less at a gallop. A camel was the wiser mount in this cursed heat.
And there was another small fact that held Ismael back. The simple reality that if he could see them with his glasses, they could also see him with theirs.
They might not expect that they were followed, but he couldn’t take that chance. He remounted, eased his horse off their trail, and angled south. It was less likely that they would check their flanks than their rear. Unfortunately the maneuver would add a couple of hours to his ride, but the sun would soon be down. Even if the horse gave out, he could walk to the rocks in the night.
Like him, the Jew was following tracks—without a moon she would have to stop for the night or risk losing them.
Ismael smiled for the first time that day. The distant camels had neither increased their pace nor altered their course. Soon it would be dark and he would come up on them unexpected, not from their rear, but from their flank, on his belly. Even if they had spotted him, they wouldn’t see him in the dark.
He would pick them off like two rats in a cage. And if he was lucky, the monk they pursued would be with them.
Three rats in a cage.
Rebecca had scanned their rear with a scope every half-hour, but saw nothing. She had no reason to believe the sniper would follow them in the first place, but if by chance he had, he still wasn’t in sight.
Caleb’s trail was unquestionable. He’d left drops of blood in the sand that a blind man with a bag over his head could follow.
The largest rock had looked like a shaft of red light in the setting sunset. Now it loomed over them, an ominous monolith in the dark.
They pulled up their mounts a hundred meters from the rocks and listened. Nothing. Rebecca slid off her camel and Michael followed suit. They walked for the tower, staying on the protected side of the animals, pausing and listening every dozen paces.
Still nothing.
It took them another twenty minutes to reach the rocks. Nothing but silence met them. They had no reason to believe Caleb would be violent, so their search went quickly. He was gone.
“So . . .” Rebecca said, staring at the twin lines in the sand. She knelt and traced one of them with her index finger.
“So, indeed. We won’t be able to follow these easily without a moon.”
“No. What do you make of them?”
“Something was obviously here. Travelers. Maybe a caravan.”
She stood and brushed off her hand. “They took him with them. I don’t see any more blood. He has help now. It’s hard to believe he got this far on foot.”
Whoever this Caleb was, he wasn’t proving to be the easy pickup she’d imagined. They were already a full day from the monastery, and he was taking them further.
“What now?” Michael asked.
“We get a few hours rest and head north. The going will be slow, but we can’t afford for him to gain another eight hours.” She looked at the mud-hole. “At least we have water.”
“You call that water?”
“We can strain it.”
“Where’s the air force when you need them?” Michael asked wryly.
“The air force is picking off stone-throwers. We’re saving Israel.”
“And here I thought we were riding camels through hell.” He smiled.
“Funny.”
“Have you considered the possibility that these travelers he’s hitched a ride with might be armed?”
“It’s a possibility,” she said. “A single soldier held off a battalion of tanks in the Sinai in ’73. There’s two of us. What are a few camel jockeys?”
“And I’m the funny one? I might prefer ten tanks over fighters who have the backbone to live in this godforsaken desert.”
“You have a point. Get some rest and dream of Jerusalem. It will clear your head.”
Rebecca set up the satellite phone thirty minutes later and made contact with the monastery. According to Samuel, Avraham was positive he’d heard the sniper on his morning round at about eight. But a further search had proven fruitless. Otherwise, all was quiet—at least as far as security went.
Zakkai had found a chamber under the root cellar. The professor got on the line, excited. He told her about finding Caleb’s old room and their methodical search. And then he told her about the letter, and Rebecca had to sit down.
“It actually says that?”
“Yes, it says that. Where the brine meets with the oil—that is where we will find the Ark.”
“So we definitely need Caleb then. Unfortunately he’s still one step ahead of us.”
“When will you have him?”
“Soon. Have you made contact with my father?”
“We’re scheduled to call in the morning.”
Rebecca cut the connection. Zakkai could smell the Ark. Imagine! The thought sent a thrill up her spine. Everything her father had worked for; everything she had lived for; everything her mother and her baby sister had died for—it just might finally be in their reach.
Rebecca laid out her bedroll at the base of the huge rock and told Michael she’d wake him in three hours.
She stared at the stars and begged God for his redemption, as she did every night. That redemption would be found in the Messiah’s coming went without saying. Any true Jew knew that, even if most Israelis did not. The Messiah’s coming meant rebuilding the Temple.
And if the Temple was rebuilt? Then she would find a handsome young man who didn’t mind being married to a woman with her past and make lots of children. A whole flock of little Israelites.
She turned in her blankets and began to picture that man. But she fell asleep before his face was fully formed.
And then suddenly she was awake. Her eyes peeled wide and her heart slamming in her chest. She had heard something that didn’t belong.
She held her breath, listening intently. Her handgun was at her head— the Glock. Safety on or off? Off.
There it was again, a scraping, like a branch on a rock. Except for the few trees by the mudhole, there were no branches here! And even if there were, there was no breeze to move them.
The sound came again and fire spread through Rebecca’s veins. She moved on instinct. She palmed the gun, rolled from her bed, and came to her knees at the base of the towering boulder. Without a break in her movement she slid silently around the boulder and flattened her back to its cool surface. She took her first long slow breath and willed her heart to slow its pounding.
For a few moments the night was silent again. She guessed they’d been resting at least two hours by the crescent moon which now sat on the horizon. It cast just enough light to turn the salt flats a dull gray.
Whap!
Rebecca blinked. The sound registered—the sound of a bullet spitting into the ground. Or a body. A silenced rifle!
Michael!
She spun around the rock.
Whap! Whap!
The rocks forty meters across the clearing momentarily brightened with two silenced muzzle flashes. Rebecca stared in unbelief at the bedroll three meters from her own. A low groan rose through the air; the bedroll moved. Michael was still alive.
Rebecca dropped to a crouch, prepared to run out to him.
The sniper was intentionally luring her, she knew. He’d seen her escape too quickly for a shot and now had wounded one in the hopes of bringing out the other.
Michael began to push himself up.
“Down!” Rebecca whispered urgently.
Whap!
Michael dropped to his chest like a sack of rocks.
Rebecca yanked herself back, fighting off panic. She closed her eyes and breathed steadily. Easy, Rebecca, this is Golan. This is the West Bank. This is what you were trained to do. How could the sniper have followed them? And why?
It didn’t matter. She had to kill this man now before he did any more damage. And how do you kill a deadly sniper hidden in a position of advantage?
You don’t.
You save the camels before he kills them, if he hasn’t already. Without a camel her mission would be over and she would be dead.
There was a saying the Mossad commander who’d trained her IDF special forces team had drilled home: Extreme, excessive force creates confusion; confusion creates mistakes; mistakes determine battles. The politicians might favor gradualism, but the military did not.
It took Rebecca only a few seconds to settle on her course of action. Her decision was a matter of instinct, not reasoning. Five years in the field had taught her to trust her instincts, like a man trusts his pulse.
She rechecked her safety, rolled her head as a matter of habit, and bolted from her cover. The nine-millimeter Glock held eight rounds and she methodically fired six of them at the sniper’s flash point while in a full sprint. Only an idiot wouldn’t seek refuge from the barrage. The sniper might be deranged but he was clearly no idiot.
The camels were already scrambling to their feet in the echoes of the unsilenced gunfire when Rebecca reached them. She turned the gun on the camel closest to the sniper and put a round in its head.
Boom!
The camel toppled to the ground, dead. The other screeched and bolted past her, out of the enclave. She had one round left.
Rebecca dropped behind the fallen camel and the sniper’s bullets came, smack, smack, smack, smack, plowing into the carcass.
“You’re dead now, Jew!” a voice screamed in Arabic.
Michael’s pack sat on the animal’s hip, in better position than she could’ve hoped for. She reached up, slipped her hand into the pack, felt the familiar ball of cold steel, and pulled out a grenade.
This Jew has a little gift for you, my dear neighbor.
Rebecca crouched behind the beast, pumped her last round at the rocks hiding the sniper, hurled the grenade, and sprinted after the fleeing camel without waiting.
She’d taken five long strides when the night shattered with a bellowing explosion that rocked the ground. Four more steps and she was around a boulder, tearing after her own camel.
You see what it means to mess with an Israeli soldier in the night?
Rebecca ran for five hundred meters, weaving on the flat to spoil any aim the sniper might have in the moonlight. A single unsilenced pistol shot rang out over the desert—the Arab was telling her that he was still alive.
The sniper was alive and Michael was dead. She didn’t allow the thought to linger. The Mossad had a saying: There was a time to mourn, a time to kill and there was a time to survive. Now it was the time to survive.
It took her twenty minutes to close the gap to her camel, another ten to coax it into her hands and mount it. A predicament that should have presented itself to her earlier now filled her with a small horror.
The satellite phone was in Michael’s pack, back at the oasis. Not that she could have taken it out with the sniper bearing down—but she could have killed her camel and not his. It was a mistake.
Mistakes determine battles.
She’d had no choice but to shoot one of the camels—she couldn’t chase down both, and she couldn’t take a chance that the sniper might take one. He had his own mount, of course, but handing him another one broke with basic military doctrine. Putting the sniper on foot in this desert would be as good as killing him.
Forty minutes later her reasoning proved itself. She stumbled upon a dying horse one kilometer to the northwest of the rocks as she circled in a wide berth. It was still twitching. The pig had ridden his animal to death.
Rebecca reluctantly dismounted and cut its throat. Now the sniper was on foot. And she was without a communications link to the others.
They would hold the monastery for a week before retreating, as they had agreed, should communications be cut. The thought of heading further into the desert alone sent a shiver through Rebecca’s bones. But she had no choice.
She couldn’t just hop over to the monastery for reinforcements, and they couldn’t send a search team into this abyss of salt.
She wouldn’t need a week, of course. She’d have Caleb in a day.
An hour later she picked up the twin trails of the caravan headed north. A tremor still lingered in her bones as she turned her camel onto the trail. Now it is time to mourn, she thought. But she didn’t feel like mourning. She felt like going back and killing. Or being killed.
But that wasn’t her mission. Roughly four hours ahead in the night there was a man named Caleb who held the key to Israel’s future.
He was her mission.